COMPARISON OF T2-WEIGHTED SPIN-ECHO AND FAST SPIN-ECHO TECHNIQUES IN THE EVALUATION OF MYELINATION

To evaluate T2-weighted fast spin-echo (FSE) and conventional spin-ech o (CSE) magnetic resonance (MR) techniques in the assessment of brain myelination, 100 consecutive pediatric patients were imaged prospectiv ely with both CSE and FSE sequences. All patients underwent a routine MR examination that included T2-weighted CSE imaging (imaging time, 10 minutes 21 seconds) and T2-weighted FSE imaging (imaging time, 2 minu tes 5 seconds). The two techniques were compared for estimating the de gree of myelination (using normal anatomic landmarks) by blind review. With T2-weighted CSE images as the ''gold standard'' for estimation o f normal myelination, FSE images were evaluated to determine if they s howed the degree of myelination similarly to CSE images. There was a s trong correlation (P < .01) between CSE and FSE images in the estimati on of myelination over a wide range of patient ages.