Enhanced urethral identification for radiotherapy planning using fat-suppressed 3D T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging

TL;DR

This study introduces a new MRI technique that improves the visibility of the prostatic urethra for better radiotherapy planning.

Contribution

A fat-suppressed 3D T2-weighted MRI sequence is proposed to enhance prostatic urethral identification.

Findings

The proposed sequence showed significantly higher Dice similarity coefficients compared to conventional 3D-T2W sequences.

The new technique achieved better visibility scores and contrast-to-noise ratios in visual assessments.

Abstract

This study proposes a fat-suppressed three-dimensional T2-weighted (3D-T2W) sequence on magnetic resonance imaging to enhance prostatic urethral identification in radiotherapy planning. Conventional 3D-T2W and the proposed sequence were obtained to evaluate prostatic urethral identification in 13 male patients. The proposed sequence demonstrated significantly higher Dice similarity coefficients compared to conventional 3D-T2W sequence (p = 0.001) and superior contrast-to-noise ratios. The proposed sequence also achieved significantly better visibility scores in visual assessment (p = 0.001). The proposed technique uses fat suppression in a standard 3D-T2W sequence, making it a simple and clinically applicable method that does not require specialized sequence designs. Our findings suggest that this approach could be a valuable noninvasive method for enhancing prostatic urethral identification, although further research with larger sample sizes and optimization of acquisition parameters is needed.

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