N/2 ghosting artifacts: elimination at 3.0-T MR cholangiography with SPACE pulse sequence.

This HIPAA-compliant study had institutional review board approval, with waiver of informed consent. The purpose was to test the hypothesis that, compared with a standard magnetic resonance (MR) cholangiography sequence, MR cholangiography with a sampling perfection with application optimized contrasts using different flip angle evolutions (SPACE) sequence reduces ghosting artifacts while maintaining image quality and sufficient contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) at 3.0 T. The study population consisted of 15 women and 14 men (mean age, 47.2 years +/- 18.1 [standard deviation]) who were consecutively referred for MR cholangiography between November 2004 and November 2005. Acquisition times were lower and N/2 ghosting artifacts were eliminated with SPACE. However, the SPACE sequence yielded images that were visually grainier and had lower CNR. Overall, the readers preferred the appearance of images obtained with the SPACE sequence, most likely because of the elimination of N/2 ghosting artifacts. (c) RSNA, 2008.