Comparison of high-resolution T1W-3D-GRE (LAVA) with 2-Point Dixon fat-water separation (FLEX) to T1W Fast Spin-Echo (FSE) in prostate cancer (PCa)

Abstract Purpose To compare T1W-FSE to T1W-3D-GRE(LAVA)-FLEX in PCa. Methodology With IRB waiver, 39 patients underwent 3T-MRI including T1W-LAVA-FLEX(80 sec)/T1W-FSE(240sec). Two radiologists assessed: A)image quality/sharpness, B)presence/severity of artifacts, C)skeletal(N=22)/nodal(N=9) metastases. Results were compared using Wilcoxon-sign rank test/ROC. Results With T1W-LAVA-FLEX, image quality/sharpness improved (p0.05). One patient had moderate fat-water swap. Detection of skeletal metastases was unchanged (p>0.05) and nodal metastases either improved (p=0.002) or comparable (p=0.16) using T1W-LAVA-FLEX. Conclusion T1W-LAVA-FLEX improves image quality, lessens motion artifact and is comparable or improves detection of metastases in PCa with reduction in acquisition time.