Moritz Florian Kircher1,2, Alan Xu1,
Anja C. Brau3, Martin Laufik1, Yuji Iwadate4,
Jarrett Rosenberg1, Bruce L. Daniel1, Robert J.
Herfkens1
1Radiology, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA, United States; 2Radiology, Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, United States; 3Global
Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, United States; 4Global
Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Hino, Japan
Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has become a routine part of abdominal MRI examinations at many institutions. Several different DWI techniques are currently in use, including breath-hold DWI and non-breathhold DWI techniques such as free-breathing, respiratory-triggered DWI and Navigator-triggered DWI. In this study, we aimed to prospectively evaluate and compare the subjective image quality of these four commonly used DWI techniques in 30 patients with liver lesions. The results demonstrate superiority of navigator-triggered and respiratory-triggered DWI over breath-hold and free-breathing DWI for most image quality parameters.