Simultaneous Bright- And Black-Blood Imaging Acquisition for Contrast-Enhanced Brain Metastasis Screening

Masami Yoneyama¹, Masanobu Nakamura¹, Tomoyuki Okuaki¹, Takashi Tabuchi¹, Atsushi Takemura², Tetsuo Ogino², Makoto Obara², Thomas Kwee³, Taro Takahara⁴

Contrast-enhanced 3D-T1-weighted imaging based on GRE is widely used for detecting small brain metastases, but since contrast materials remain in both blood and the tumor parenchyma and thus increase the signal intensity of both regions, it is often challenging to distinguish brain tumors from blood. To overcome this problem, "black-blood" version of T1 weighted images based on TSE with/without MSDE are used recently, but these methods are difficult to "perfect" suppression of whole-vessel signals, and therefore the differentiation of residual blood vessel and small brain metastasis is occasionally difficult. In this study, we propose a new scheme of fast, volumetric, high-resolution, bright- and black-blood imaging simultaneous acquisition (VISIBLE). This optimal sequence can be used for 3D volumetric T1 weighted bright- and black-blood imaging, and that is promising for detecting small brain metastases, by the differentiation improvement of blood vessel and small brain metastasis.