Ultrashort Echo-Time Magnetic Resonance Imaging Sequence in the Assessment of Systemic Sclerosis-Interstitial Lung Disease

Purpose:To test respiratory-triggered ultrashort echo-time (UTE) Spiral VIBE-MRI sequence in systemic sclerosis-interstitial lung disease assessment compared with computed tomography (CT). Material and Methods:Fifty four SSc patients underwent chest CT and UTE (1.5 T). Two radiologists, independently and in consensus, verified ILD presence/absence and performed a semiquantitative analysis (sQA) of ILD, ground-glass opacities (GGO), reticulations and honeycombing (HC) extents on both scans. A CT software quantitative texture analysis (QA) was also performed. For ILD detection, intra-/inter-reader agreements were computed with Cohen K coefficient. UTE sensitivity and specificity were assessed. For extent assessments, intra-/inter-reader agreements and UTE performance against CT were computed by Lin's concordance coefficient (CCC). Results:Three UTE were discarded for low quality, 51 subjects were included in the study. Of them, 42 QA segmentations were accepted. ILD was diagnosed in 39/51 CT. UTE intra-/inter-reader K in ILD diagnosis were 0.56 and 0.26. UTE showed 92.8% sensitivity and 75.0% specificity. ILD, GGO, and reticulation extents were 14.8%, 7.7%, and 7.1% on CT sQA and 13.0%, 11.2%, and 1.6% on CT QA. HC was <1% and not further considered. UTE intra-/inter-reader CCC were 0.92 and 0.89 for ILD extent and 0.84 and 0.79 for GGO extent. UTE RET extent intra-/inter-reader CCC were 0.22 and 0.18. UTE ILD and GGO extents CCC against CT sQA and QA were >= 0.93 and >= 0.88, respectively. RET extent CCC were 0.35 and 0.22 against sQA and QA, respectively. Conclusion:UTE Spiral VIBE-MRI sequence is reliable in assessing ILD and GGO extents in systemic sclerosis-interstitial lung disease patients.

Automated summary

The purpose of this study was to test the application of respiratory-triggered ultrashort echo-time (UTE) Spiral VIBE-MRI sequence in the assessment of systemic sclerosis-interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD) compared with computed tomography (CT). The results showed that the UTE sequence had high reliability in assessing the extent of ILD and GGO.