Intraindividual Comparison between the Contrast-Enhanced Golden-Angle Radial Sparse Parallel Sequence and the Conventional Fat-Suppressed Contrast-Enhanced T1-Weighted Spin-Echo Sequence for Head and Neck MRI

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FIG 1.
Flow chart of the patient-selection process.
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FIG 2.
A 55-year-old female patient with a history of recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue (top row); the lesion is better delineated in GRASP-VIBE (A) than in T1-TSE (B). A 76-year-old male patient with a history of left hypopharyngeal cancer with transoral robotic surgery (middle row). Compared with GRASP-VIBE (C), a significant respiratory motion artifact is observed in T1-TSE (D). A 70-year-old male patient with a history of left vocal cord squamous cell carcinoma in situ and laser cordectomy (bottom row). Compared with GRASP-VIBE (E), there is a noticeable pulsation artifact from blood vessels in T1-TSE (F).
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FIG 3.
A 73-year-old male patient with a history of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma of the right tonsil; the susceptibility artifacts due to dental amalgam are more prominent in GRASP-VIBE (A) than in T1-TSE (B). In right submental region of the same patient, fat suppression is weaker in GRASP-VIBE (C) than in T1-TSE (D).
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FIG 4.
Boxplots of qualitative assessments for GRASP-VIBE and T1-TSE.
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FIG 5.
Boxplots of SNR (A) and CNR (B) of GRASP-VIBE and T1-TSE.

Table 1:

Detailed acquisition parameters of the 2 sequences

Sequence	GRASP-VIBE	T1-TSE
FOV	200 × 200	200 × 200
Matrix	224 × 224	384 × 230
Section thickness (mm)	4	4
Gap (mm)	0	1
No. of slices	26	32
In-plane resolution (mm)	1.04 × 1.04	0.52 × 0.52
Echo-train	1	4
Flip angle	12°	160°
TR/TE (ms)	4.1/1.9	690/12
Bandwidth (Hz/px)	496 Hz/px	310 Hz/px
No. of excitations	1	1
Fat-suppression technique	Chemical shift selective	Dixon
Scanning type	Gradient-echo	TSE
Scan time (min/sec)	4/46	2/6
No. of dynamic acquisitions (temporal resolution) (sec)	95 (2.5)	NA
Acquisition type	3D	2D

Table 2:

Baseline characteristics of included patients^{^a}

Table 3:

Qualitative evaluations and κ values for overall image quality, overall artifacts, and anatomic conspicuities of GRASP-VIBE and T1-TSE

	GRASP-VIBE			T1-TSE			P Value^{^b}
	Scores (mean)	κ	P Value^{^a}	Scores (mean)	κ	P Value^{^a}	P Value^{^b}
Overall image quality
Rater A	4.74 (SD, 0.49)	0.29	.003	3.81 (SD, 0.68)	0.594	<.001
Rater B	4.62 (SD, 0.53)			3.51 (SD, 0.91)
Average of two raters	4.68 (SD, 0.41)			3.66 (SD, 0.73)			<.001
Overall artifacts		0.21	.041		0.542	<.001
Rater A	4.26 (SD, 0.68)			3.60 (SD, 0.60)
Rater B	4.68 (SD, 0.51)			3.55 (SD, 0.97)
Average of two raters	4.47 (SD, 0.48)			3.58 (SD, 0.71)			<.001
Oropharyngeal mucosal conspicuity		0.80	<.001		0.5	<.001
Rater A	4.87 (SD, 0.39)			4.15 (SD, 0.74)
Rater B	4.83 (SD, 0.47)			4.04 (SD, 1.06)
Average of two raters	4.85 (SD, 0.41)			4.11 (SD, 0.79)			<.001
Hypopharyngeal mucosal conspicuity		0.30	.016		0.422	.002
Rater A	4.89 (SD, 0.32)			3.58 (SD, 0.84)
Rater B	4.79 (SD, 0.49)			3.57 (SD, 1.05)
Average of two raters	4.84 (SD, 0.34)			3.58 (SD, 0.81)			<.001
Cervical lymph node conspicuity		0.18	.072		0.34	.001
Rater A	4.64 (SD, 0.48)			4.34 (SD, 0.65)
Rater B	4.94 (SD, 0.30)			3.81 (SD, 0.83)
Average of two raters	4.79 (SD, 0.32)			4.08 (SD, 0.64)			<.001