Improved Spatiotemporal Resolution of Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast Perfusion MRI in Brain Tumors Using Simultaneous Multi-Slice Echo-Planar Imaging.

A. Chakhoyan,B.M. Ellingson,K. Leu,T.F. Cloughesy,W.B. Pope

doi:10.3174/ajnr.a5433

Abstract

DSC perfusion MR imaging in brain tumors requires a trade-off between spatial and temporal resolution, resulting in less spatial coverage to meet the temporal resolution requirements for accurate relative CBV estimation. DSC-MR imaging could potentially benefit from the advantages associated with simultaneous multi-slice imaging, including increased spatiotemporal resolution. In the current article, we demonstrate how simultaneous multi-slice EPI can be used to improve DSC-MR imaging spatiotemporal resolution in patients with glioblastoma.

Highlights

Simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) has been shown to not have appreciable loss in SNR compared with traditional methods,[4] and studies have shown that SMS is effective in reducing the acquisition time with higher spatiotemporal resolution.[5,7,8]
We demonstrate the clinical utility of using SMS-EPI to increase the spatiotemporal resolution of DSC-MR imaging in patients with glioblastoma
GraphPad Prism software, Version 6.0h (GraphPad Software, San Diego, California) was used for all statistical analyses. Both raw DSC and calculated relative CBV (rCBV) maps were of comparable quality; rCBV maps calculated with SMS-EPI were obtained for the entire brain and at slightly higher spatial resolution compared with rCBV maps obtained with conventional singleshot EPI (Fig 1A, -B)

Summary

Introduction

SMS has been shown to not have appreciable loss in SNR compared with traditional methods,[4] and studies have shown that SMS is effective in reducing the acquisition time with higher spatiotemporal resolution.[5,7,8] In the current article, we demonstrate the clinical utility of using SMS-EPI to increase the spatiotemporal resolution of DSC-MR imaging in patients with glioblastoma. All patients underwent DSC-MR imaging with conventional single-shot EPI followed by SMS-EPI, 1–2 months later.

Results

Conclusion