Feasibility of Accelerated 3D T1-Weighted MRI using Compressed-SENSE: Application to Quantitative Volume Measurement of Human Brain Structures

Abstract Objective Scan time reduction is crucial for volumetric acquisitions to improve workflow productivity and to reduce motion artifact during MRI procedure. We find out whether Compressed SENSE-4 (CS-4) can be pushed with 3D-turbo-field-echo T1-weighted (3D-TFE-T1W) sequence without compromising subcortical measurements on clinical 1.5T MRI. Materials and methods Thirty-three healthy volunteers (24 females, 9 males) underwent 1.5T MRI equipped with 12-channel coil. 3D-TFE-T1W for whole brain coverage was performed with different acceleration factors including SENSE-2, SENSE-4, CS-4. Freesurfer, FSL’s FIRST, and volBrain packages were implemented for subcortical segmentations. All processed data were assessed using Wilcoxon signed-rank test. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results In comparison with reference, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) obtained by CS-4 slightly dropped, in which the maximum SNR drop was detected at Amygdala with value of 10.55%. However, such disadvantage did not affect volume measurements - there were no statically significant differences for all subcortical structures (p < 0.05). They were in strong correlation, in which Pearson’s correlation coefficients were larger than 0.90. Moreover, the effect size scores are mostly in trivial to small ranges with values of 0.07–0.23. Conclusion CS-4 provided sufficient quality of 3D-TFE-T1W images for 1.5T MRI equipped with 12-channel receive coil. Subcortical volumes obtained from CS-4 images were consistent across different post-processing packages.