High-resolution MRI using compressed sensing-sensitivity encoding (CS-SENSE) for patients with suspected neurovascular compression syndrome: comparison with the conventional SENSE parallel acquisition technique

Aim: To retrospectively compare sensitivity encoding (SENSE) and compressed sensing-sensitivity encoding (CS-SENSE) for high resolution (HR) cranial nerve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a clinical population.

Material and methods: Twenty consecutive patients who were clinically suspected of neurovascular compression syndrome (NVCS) were enrolled in this study. HR three-dimensional isotropic T2-weighted fast spin-echo (T2 VISTA) sequences with SENSE or CS-SENSE, and contrast-enhanced three-dimensional T1-turbo field-echo (CE 3D T1 TFE) with SENSE or CS-SENSE, were compared using quantitative and qualitative methods by two board-certified neuroradiologists.

Results: For the T2 VISTA, CS-SENSE was significantly superior to SENSE in terms of cerebrospinal fluid homogeneity. For CE 3D T1 TFE, CS-SENSE was significantly superior to SENSE in terms of the existence of ghost artefact and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the pontine parenchyma. There was no significant difference in overall image quality between the two techniques. Compared with SENSE, CS-SENSE reduced the scan time to 44.2% of that with SENSE on T2 VISTA, and to 66.1% of that with SENSE of the CE 3D T1 TFE, with the differences being statistically significant (p<0.01, both).

Conclusion: For T2 VISTA and CE 3D T1 TFE imaging of patients with suspected NVCS, CS-SENSE appears to offer superior reductions in motion artefact and scan time relative to SENSE, without a loss of overall image quality.