Comparison of fat suppression capability for chest MR imaging with Dixon, SPAIR and STIR techniques at 3 Tesla MR system

Abstract Purpose To directly compare fat suppression efficacy of Dixon, spectral attenuated inversion recovery (SPAIR) and short tau inversion recovery (STIR) techniques for a 3 T MR system. Materials and methods Nineteen consecutive patients (11 men, 8 women; mean age 67.9 years) underwent chest MR imaging. Contrast-noise ratio (CNR) between muscle and fat (CNR Fat ) was calculated by ROI measurement. Then, two radiologists used a five-point scale for visual assessment of image quality, fat suppression capability and lesion detection. Next, the quantitative calculations obtained with all three techniques were compared by means of Tukey's honest significant difference (HSD) test. Inter-observer agreements were assessed by kappa statistics and χ 2 test. Fisher's least significant difference (LSD) test was used for comparison among all scores. Results CNR Fat of SPAIR were significantly higher than those of Dixon and STIR ( p p p Conclusion Dixon technique has better fat suppression capability on T2-weighted turbo SE imaging than SPAIR technique on chest MR imaging examined with a 3 T MR system, although it can't substitute STIR technique on fat suppression and lesion visualization.