Time-Saving 3D MRI Protocols with Millimeter and Submillimeter Isotropic Spatial Resolution for Face and Neck Imaging As Implemented at a Single-Site Major Referral Center

ABSTRACT

MRI has become the routine modality for staging nasopharyngeal carcinoma, evaluating for perineural tumor spread, and detecting cartilage invasion in laryngeal carcinoma. However, these protocols traditionally require in the range of 25 to 35 minutes of acquisition time. 3D sequences offer the potential advantage of time savings through the acquisition of one-millimeter or sub-millimeter resolution isotropic data followed by multiplanar reformats that require no further imaging time. We have iteratively optimized vendor product 3D T1-weighted MRI sequences for morphologic face and neck imaging, reducing the average acquisition time of our 3T protocols by 9 minutes, 57 seconds (40.9%) and of our 1.5T protocols by 9 minutes, 5 seconds (37.0%) while simultaneously maintaining or improving spatial resolution. This clinical report describes our experience optimizing and implementing commercially available 3D T1-weighted MRI pulse sequence protocols for clinical face and neck MRI examinations utilizing illustrative cases. We provide protocol details to allow others to replicate our implementations and we outline challenges we faced along with our solutions.

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