3D Brachial Plexus Neurography With Variable‐Rate Selective Excitation RF Pulses

作者：Emma J. McKinney, Xiaoying Cai, Darryl B. Sneag, Philip G. Colucci, Yenpo Lin, Ji Lin, Shu-Han Wang, Guido Buonincontri, Dominik Nickel, Nicolas Groß‐Weege, A Stemmer, Peter Kollasch, Ek T. Tan · 发表于：Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1002/jmri.70338 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Intraoperative Neuromonitoring and Anesthetic Effects、Nerve Injury and Rehabilitation、Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies

BACKGROUND: Slab-selective radiofrequency (RF) pulses are commonly required in three-dimensional (3D) turbo spin echo (TSE) in brachial plexus magnetic resonance neurography (MRN). However, their long selective RF pulses lead to violation of Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill conditions, which might increase imaging artifacts. HYPOTHESIS: That VERSE STIR-TSE would yield comparable motion artifact to conventional STIR-TSE with superior nerve conspicuity and greater subjective appeal. STUDY TYPE: Prospective, cross-sectional study. POPULATION: Twenty-four subjects (16 females; mean age: 43.7 years; range: 19-76 years) evaluated for clinical suspicion of brachial plexopathy, undergoing brachial plexus MRI (10 left, 9 right, 5 bilateral, 29 total scans analyzed). Agar phantoms mimicking nerve and muscle were also evaluated. FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: 3-Tesla, 3D STIR-TSE with and without VERSE. ASSESSMENT: Three radiologists, blinded to the sequence type and clinical data, qualitatively evaluated nerve conspicuity, motion, and preferred sequence on a 5-point scale. STATISTICAL TESTS: Wilcoxon signed-rank tests compared nerve conspicuity (0-4 scale), motion artifact (0-4 scale), and preferred series between the non-VERSE and VERSE pulse sequences. Gwet's AC2 assessed inter-rater agreement. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: The VERSE STIR-TSE sequence was significantly preferred by all raters. Motion artifact was not significantly different between the sequen...