Validation of fast SE-EPI T2 mapping with reference to conventional CPMG T2 mapping, and its application in prostate cancer

This study attempts to compare a new fast SE-EPI T2 mapping method with the conventional CPMG method, which showed potential in prostate cancer evaluation and also other applications. The SE-EPI method has advantages in faster acquisition than CPMG method and can be integrated into scan of diffusion imaging with slightly increase of acquisition time. Voxel-by-voxel and region-of-interest (ROI) based analysis were performed to compare these two methods. The result showed that the T2 values of SE-EPI method is relatively lower than those of CPMG method, while a strong correlation was found: voxel-by-voxel analysis showed that the correlation coefficient was up to 0.84; in ROI-based analysis, correlation coefficient was up to 0.87. In addition, the clinical validation showed that the T2 maps of SE-EPI at b = 0 and CPMG-based T2 have similar statistical significance in differentiating between benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and prostate cancer (PCa) with mean and standard deviation of 81.6 ± 13.8 vs 72.2 ± 8.5 (SE-EPI) and 108.9 ± 37.8 vs 87.5 ± 10.6 (CPMG). Thus, this work suggests that the SE-EPI method could be considered as a candidate for fast T2 mapping, and be used alone or combined with diffusion in multi-parametric analysis.