Purpose: To evaluate the osseous anatomy of the proximal femur extracted from a 3D-MRI volumetric interpolated breath-hold (VIBE) sequence using either a Dixon or water excitation (WE) fat suppression method, and to measure the overall difference using CT as a reference standard.
Material and methods: This retrospective study reviewed imaging of adult patients with hip pain who underwent 3D hip MRI and CT. A semi-automatically segmented CT model served as the reference standard, and MRI segmentation was performed manually for each unilateral hip joint. The differences between Dixon-VIBE-3D-MRI vs. CT, and WE-VIBE-3D-MRI vs. CT, were measured. Equivalence tests between Dixon-VIBE and WE-VIBE models were performed with a threshold of 0.1 mm. Bland-Altman plots and Lin's concordance-correlation coefficient were used to analyze the agreement between WE and Dixon sequences. Subgroup analyses were performed for the femoral head/neck, intertrochanteric, and femoral shaft areas.
Results: The mean and maximum differences between Dixon-VIBE-3D-MRI vs. CT were 0.2917 and 3.4908 mm, respectively, whereas for WE-VIBE-3D-MRI vs. CT they were 0.3162 and 3.1599 mm. The mean differences of the WE and Dixon methods were equivalent (P = 0.0292). However, the maximum difference was not equivalent between the two methods and it was higher in WE method. Lin's concordance-correlation coefficient showed poor agreement between Dixon and WE methods. The mean differences between the CT and 3D-MRI models were significantly higher in the femoral shaft area (P = 0.0004 for WE and P = 0.0015 for Dixon) than in the other areas. The maximum difference was greatest in the intertrochanteric area for both techniques.
Conclusion: The difference between 3D-MR and CT models were acceptable with a maximal difference below 3.5mm. WE and Dixon fat suppression methods were equivalent. The mean difference was highest at the femoral shaft area, which was off-center from the magnetization field.