It has been shown that quantitative T1 relaxation times measured on T1 maps may help differentiate transition zone (TZ) cancer from normal transition zone (NTZ). However, T1 weighted images are not utilized for non-contrast detection of prostate cancer. In this study, we explored scientific reasons why T1w images have not been found to be of utility for this purpose. Fat suppressed T1w 3D gradient echo (VIBE) sequence acquisition settings were adjusted based on simulated acquisition parameters and our measured differences between cancer and NTZ, to try to maximize differences in calculated signal between tumor lesions and NTZ. The resulting contrast remains too subtle to utilize for detection; though quantitative differences are readily measureable.
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