Intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted MR imaging of the liver using respiratory-cardiac double triggering

TL;DR: It is suggested that RCT is a more effective physiological scheme for improving SNRs, the precision, repeatability, and variability of quantitative parameters than RT for IVIM-DWI in the liver.

Abstract: // Jinning Li 1, * , Caiyuan Zhang 1, * , Yanfen Cui 1 , Huanhuan Liu 1 , Weibo Chen 2 , Guilong Wang 2 and Dengbin Wang 1 1 Department of Radiology, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, China 2 Philips Healthcare, Shanghai 200233, China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Dengbin Wang, email: wangdengbin@xinhuamed.com.cn Keywords: intravoxel incoherent motion, diffusion-weighted imaging, liver, repeatability, respiratory-cardiac double triggering Received: August 02, 2017      Accepted: September 22, 2017      Published: October 11, 2017 ABSTRACT To investigate the influence of respiratory-cardiac double triggering (RCT) on intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) for the liver, twelve healthy volunteers underwent liver DWI twice respectively with respiratory triggering (RT) and RCT schemes. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of the images, values, repeatability (evaluating with within-subject coefficient of variation), and variability of quantitative parameters, including apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), pure diffusion coefficient ( D ), perfusion fraction ( f ), and perfusion-related diffusion coefficient ( D *), were evaluated for each DWI sequence. Results showed that the use of RCT scheme significantly enhanced SNRs ( P < 0.001), improved the measurement precision ( P ≤ 0.023) and repeatability ( P ≤ 0.009) of ADC, D , and f values, decreased the variability of ADC and D values ( P ≤ 0.015). Furthermore, this improvement was not completely confined to the left liver lobe, but also observed for the right liver lobe. Moreover, the precision of D * values in the right lobe ( P < 0.001) and its repeatability in the left lobe ( P = 0.002) were also significantly improved. Thus, our findings suggest that RCT is a more effective physiological scheme for improving SNRs, the precision, repeatability, and variability of quantitative parameters than RT for IVIM-DWI in the liver.