Objective: The aim of this study was to compare respiratory-triggered DIfferential Subsampling with Cartesian Ordering (rtDISCO) and breath-held Liver Acquisition with Volume Acquisition (LAVA) image quality.
Methods: In this institutional review board-approved, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant prospective study, 25 subjects underwent T1 imaging with rtDISCO and LAVA before and after intravenous contrast. Three readers scored individual series and side-by-side comparisons for motion and noise. Eight clinical tasks were qualitatively assessed.
Results: As individual series, readers rated rtDISCO images as more degraded by motion on both precontrast (mean rtDISCO score, 2.7; LAVA, 1.6; P < 0.001) and postcontrast images (rtDISCO, 2.4; LAVA, 1.8; P < 0.001). Readers preferred LAVA images based on motion on both precontrast (mean preference, -1.2; P < 0.001) and postcontrast images (mean preference, -0.7; P < 0.001) on side-by-side assessment. There was no preference between sequences for 6 of 8 clinical tasks on postcontrast images.
Conclusions: Readers preferred LAVA with respect to motion but not noise; there was no preference in most of the tested clinical tasks.