Ultrafast (instant-scan) MR imaging of the abdomen at 2.0 T

Ultrafast MR imaging techniques acquire whole-body images in as little as 1/25th of a second. The instant scan technique (Advanced NMR Systems) requires only a single excitation. Thus MR images have a repetition time that is infinitely long and an echo time that can be varied from 30 to 600 msec. Water or fat protons can be imaged independently. This clinical study was undertaken to investigate the utility of this technique in five healthy volunteers and 16 patients. The latter were selected on the basis of known liver disease. Images showed no degradation secondary to physiologic motion. Lesions as small as 5 mm were detected with high lesion-liver contrast. Due to much longer T2 times, the contrast-to-noise ratio between fluid-containing structures such as the gallbladder, bladder, and renal cysts was even greater. The authors results show that this technique offers considerable promise for motion-free abdominal MR imaging