Liver acquisition with volume acceleration flex on 70-cm wide-bore and 60-cm conventional-bore 3.0-T MRI

This study aimed to compare the uniformity of fat suppression and image quality between liver acquisition with volume acceleration flex (LAVA-Flex) and LAVA on 60-cm conventional-bore and 70-cm wide-bore 3.0-T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The uniformity of fat suppression by LAVA-Flex and LAVA was assessed as the efficiency of suppression of superficial fat at the levels of the liver dome, porta, and renal hilum. Percentage standard deviation (%SD) was calculated using the following equation: %SD (%) = 100 × SD of the regions of interest (ROIs)/mean value of the signal intensity (SI) in the ROIs. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast ratio (CR) were calculated. In the LAVA sequence, the %SD in all slices on wide-bore 3.0-T MRI was significantly higher than that on conventional-bore 3.0-T MRI (P < 0.01). However, there was no significant difference in fat signal uniformity between the conventional and wide-bore scanners when LAVA-Flex was used. In the liver, there were no significant differences in SNR between the two sequences. However, the SNR in the pancreas was lower for the wide-bore scanner than for the conventional-bore scanner for both sequences (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in CR for the liver and fat between LAVA-Flex and LAVA in both scanners. The CR in the LAVA-Flex images obtained by wide-bore MRI was significantly higher than that in the LAVA-Flex images recorded by conventional-bore MRI (P < 0.001). LAVA-Flex offers more homogenous fat suppression in the upper abdomen than LAVA for both conventional and wide-bore 3.0-T MRI.