Accelerated Bilateral Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced 3D Spiral Breast MRI Using TSENSE

Purpose: To assess the ability of adaptive sensitivity encoding incorporating temporal filtering (TSENSE) to accelerate bilateral dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) 3D breast MRI. Materials and Methods: Bilateral DCE breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exams were performed using a dual-band water-only excitation and a "stack-of-spirals" imaging trajectory. TSENSE was applied in the slab direction with an acceleration factor of 2. Four different techniques for sensitivity map calculation were compared by analyzing resultant contrast uptake curves qualitatively and quantitatively for 10 patient datasets. In addition, image quality and temporal resolution were compared between unaccelerated and TSENSE Images. Results: TSENSE can increase temporal resolution by a factor of 2 in DCE imaging, providing better depiction of contrast uptake curves and good image quality. Of the different methods tested, calculation of static sensitivity maps by averaging late postcontrast frames yields the lowest aliasing artifact level based on ROI analysis. Conclusion: TSENSE acceleration combined with 3D spiral imaging is very time-efficient, providing 11-second temporal resolution and 1.1 x 1.1 x 3 mm(3) spatial resolution over a 20 x 20 x 10 cm(3) field of view for each breast.