Motivation: The prostate imaging standard (PI-RADS) specifies high in-plane resolution (0.40mm frequency × 0.70mm phase) for T2-weighted spin-echo, but adherence is low. Goal(s): Study if modification to equivalent pixel area allows improved performance. Approach: Frequency resolution of a PI-RADS-adherent sequence was degraded to 0.50mm, allowing two-fold bandwidth reduction while maintaining 10 msec inter-echo time. Phase resolution was improved to 0.57mm, maintaining equivalent pixel area. BW reduction allowed two-fold averaging reduction. Results: Across 62 prostate exams the average T2-WI acquisition time decreased by 23% (>50 sec). Image quality improved based on diagnostic quality (p<0.037) as well as PI-QUALv2 scores (p<0.015). Impact: Modification of the PI-RADS minimum technical standard parameters in prostate T2-weighted imaging of 0.4mm frequency × 0.7mm phase in-plane resolution to allow equivalent pixel area allows reduction in acquisition time and improved image quality.
Riederer et al. (Tue,) studied this question.