Objective: To investigate the feasibility and handling of abdominal MRI-guided biopsies in a 3-T MRI system.
Methods: Over a 1-year period, 50 biopsies were obtained in 47 patients with tumours of the upper abdominal organs guided by 3-T MRI with a large-bore diameter of 70 cm. Lesions in liver (47), spleen (1) and kidney (2) were biopsied with a coaxial technique using a 16-G biopsy needle guided by a T1-weighted three-dimensional gradient recalled echo volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination (T1w-3D-GRE-VIBE) sequence. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, complication rate, interventional complexity, room/intervention time and needle artefacts were determined.
Results: A sensitivity of 0.93, specificity of 1.0 and accuracy of 0.94 were observed. Three patients required a rebiopsy. There was a minor complications rate of 13.6%, and no major complications were observed. Histopathology revealed 38 malignant lesions, and 3-month follow-up confirmed 9 benign lesions. Mean lesion diameter was 3.4 ± 3.1 cm (50% being smaller than 2 cm). Mean needle tract length was 10.8 ± 3.3 cm. Median room time was 42.0 ± 19.8 min and intervention time 9.3 ± 8.1 min. Needle artefact size was about 9-fold greater for perpendicular access versus access parallel to the main magnetic field.
Conclusion: Biopsies of the upper abdomen can be performed with great technical success and easy handling because of the large-bore diameter. The MRI-guided biopsy needle had an acceptable susceptibility artefact at 3 T. However future research must aim to reduce the susceptibility effects of the biopsy systems.