Purpose: Our goal was to compare fast SE (FSE) with T2-weighted conventional SE (CSE) MRI of cervical carcinoma and to evaluate the potential advantage of fat suppression technique.
Methods: We compared the tissue contrasts between cervical carcinoma and the surrounding tissues in 24 patients. The following MR sequences were obtained at 0.5 T: T1-weighted CSE (450/20 ms), T2-weighted CSE (2,500/45, 90), and T2-weighted FSE (4,800/120), the latter with and without fat suppression using fat-selective prepulses.
Results: T2-weighted FSE MRI provided significantly better contrasts between tumor and normal cervical stroma (p < 0.001) and between tumor and rectum wall (p < 0.05) than T2-weighted CSE MRI. T1-weighted SE MRI gave the highest tissue contrast between tumor and parametrial tissue (p < 0.001). Fat suppression did not further improve tissue contrasts.
Conclusion: MR staging of cervical carcinoma is best done with the combination of T1-weighted SE and T2-weighted FSE images, without additional fat suppression.