High-resolution DWI in the breast by Spatiotemporal encoding (SPEN): clinical utility in comparison with SS-EPI and RESOLVE

This study investigated the breast lesion conspicuity and ADC reliability for 3 different DWI protocols; SPEN, SS-EPI, and RESOLVE. The in-plane resolution for SPEN and RESOLVE was 1x1mm2, and SS-EPI was 2x2mm2. SPEN showed a higher score for lesion conspicuity than SS-EPI, and a lower score than RESOLVE. ADC values in breast lesions were significantly lower in SPEN than others, presumably due to the choice of different b values, the sequences having different T1/T2 weightings, different robustness vs motions, the presence of unsuppressed fat, or different viewer systems used to analyze the data, which will need further investigation.