Objective: The authors describe their initial clinical experience in comparing a spiral spin-echo technique with a fat-saturated fast spin-echo technique for imaging the pelvis.
Methods: A total of 18 patients were imaged with both spiral spin-echo and fat-saturated fast spin-echo magnetic resonance imaging. The spiral spin-echo technique combines a spectrally and spatially selective radiofrequency excitation with a spiral k-space trajectory. This technique permits rapid acquisition of T2-weighted water-only images.
Results: The spiral spin-echo images were judged superior to the fat-saturated fast spin-echo images in terms of uniformity of fat suppression and absence of flow-related artifacts. However, the overall image quality of the spiral spin-echo images was inferior to that of the fat-saturated fast spin-echo images, as a result of blurring caused by off resonance effects. The two techniques were judged equivalent in terms of conspicuity of the abnormality and diagnostic information.
Conclusion: The authors conclude that the spiral spin-echo technique holds promise, particularly if combined with a deblurring algorithm.