Repeatability and Image Quality of IDEAL-IQ in Human Lumbar Vertebrae for Fat and Iron Quantification across Acquisition Parameters

Echo asymmetry and least square estimation-IQ (IDEAL-IQ) were used to quantify fat and iron to verify the effects of collection parameters on repeatability and image quality of water and fat in human vertebral body. Six IDEAL-IQ sequences were used to scan 48 healthy adult women. Reproducibility of fat and iron quantification and image quality were assessed for six IDEAL-IQ sequences. The results showed that the correlation index (0.987, 0.721) of FF and R2* between scans of sequence 2 was higher than that of other sequences, and the consistency of fat quantification was better than that of iron (0.860 vs. 0.579) (P < 0.001). Sequence 2 had the highest image quality score (4.9) and the lowest CV score (9.2%). In the FF figure, SNR (18.8) and CNR (17.8 & PLUSMN;6.4) were the highest, while CV was the lowest (36.7%, 36.1%). In the R2* figure, sequence 3 had the highest SNR (21.8) and CNR (20.5), but its CV (51.8% and 56.1%) was significantly higher than that of sequence 2. The occurrence of fat-water exchange (FWS) was lowest in sequence 2 and sequence 4 (0, N=96). In conclusion, the fat quantification of IDEAL-IQ was robust to the changes of collection parameters, and section thickness (ST) had a certain effect on maintaining good repeatability of R2* quantification. The higher the ST was, the better the image quality of FF and R2* was maintained and stable and the less the occurrence of FWS.

Automated summary

In this study, IDEAL-IQ was used to scan the vertebral bodies of healthy adult women, evaluating the repeatability of fat and iron quantification as well as image quality. The results showed that sequence 2 had the highest correlation of fat and R2* between scans, with better fat quantification consistency than iron. Sequence 2 also had the best image quality and lowest CV score.