Radiology, Vol 196, 765-771, Copyright © 1995 by Radiological Society of North America
Brain lesions in patients with multiple sclerosis: detection with echo- planar imaging
B Siewert, MR Patel, MF Mueller, J Gaa, DG Darby, CM Poser, PA Wielopolski, RR Edelman and S Warach
Department of Radiology, Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
PURPOSE: To evaluate the detection of brain lesions with echo-planar
imaging relative to conventional spin-echo (SE) imaging. MATERIALS AND
METHODS: In 17 patients (three men, 14 women; mean age, 31 years) with
multiple sclerosis, the following were compared: single-shot proton-
density- and T2-weighted and thin-section T2-weighted echo-planar,
proton-density- and T2-weighted multishot echo-planar, and conventional SE
sequences. Quantitative and qualitative criteria as well as lesion
detectability were evaluated. The proton-density-weighted SE sequence was
used as the standard of reference. RESULTS: Multishot sequences were
superior to single-shot sequences in image quality and lesion
detectability. With the multishot proton-density-weighted sequence, 53 of
54 large lesions and 23 of 30 small lesions were detected; with the
single-shot proton-density-weighted sequence, 38 of 54 large lesions and
five of 30 small lesions were detected. CONCLUSION: With multishot
echo-planar sequences, detectability of large lesions is similar to that
with conventional SE imaging. Susceptibility artifact is diminished in
comparison to single-shot echo-planar sequences.
