Image quality and evaluation ability of magnetic resonance imaging techniques for thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy: Dixon fat-suppression technique vs. spectral attenuated inversion recovery

Purpose We aimed to compare two magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, Dixon and spectral attenuated inversion recovery (SPAIR) fat-suppression, in terms of image quality suitability for evaluating thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) lesion characteristics. Methods This cross-sectional, retrospective study involved 70 patients with TAO (140 eyes) who underwent orbital coronal MRI examinations, including Dixon-transverse relaxation (T2)-weighted (T2WI) SPAIR-T2WI, between 2020 2022. compared the fat-suppression artifacts, noise (N), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise (CNR), signal intensity (SIR) extraocular muscles (SIR-EOM) lacrimal glands (SIR-LG), activity evaluation efficiency. Results Dixon-T2WI showed a higher frequency better subjective characteristics lesions (65.7% vs. 14.3%) than SPAIR-T2WI. Fat-suppression artifact scores were lower SPAIR-T2WI ( p < 0.001). The N, SNR, CNR values, EOM-SIR, LG-SIR (all Clinical (CASs) positive correlations SIR. correlation EOM-SIR CAS was that (0.590 0.493, all 0.001; 0.340 0.295, 0.01). yielded area under curve (0.865 0.760, 0.695 0.617, = 0.017). Conclusion yields Furthermore, it has stronger ability evaluate inflammation SPAIR, sensitivity specificity active staging.