[Detectability of focal liver lesions: comparison of MRI at 1.5 T and dynamic spiral CT].

Purpose: To compare dynamic spiral CT with MR imaging in the detectability of focal liver lesions.

Material And Methods: Thirty-one patients with 62 focal liver lesions (27 benign) were evaluated retrospectively. Dynamic spiral CT scans were compared with T1- and T2- weighted spin-echo (SE) sequences and in part with multi slice 2-D-FLASH and single-shot slice-selective inversion recovery Turbo-FLASH sequences at 1.5 T.

Results: Dynamic spiral CT detected 89% of all lesions and was superior to each sequence alone (56-70%), and also to MRI overall (79%) regardless of lesion size, localization, and histology. However, statistical significance (p < 0.05) was only found for the differences between CT and the T1-weighted SE sequence.

Conclusion: Compared to conventional SE and GE MR imaging sequences, dynamic spiral CT scanning seems to be more effective in the detection of focal liver lesions.