Comparison of magnetic resonance imaging quality between hard and soft coils of shoulder joint

To compare the effects of 12-channel hard and soft coils on the imaging quality of shoulder MRI. Methods: Thirty-three healthy volunteers underwent MRI scanning with a hard coil and soft coil. A comparison of SNR and contrast noise ratio (CNR) of the supraspinatus muscle (deltoid muscle), humeral head and biceps long head tendon in PDWI-FSE-COR-FS, T₁WI-FSE-COR, PDWI-FSE-TRA-FS and T₂WI-FSE-SAG-FS sequences was made. T₁WI-FSE sequence scanning was performed on the special water module of the joint image using a shoulder hard coil and soft coil. The SNR of each layer was collected, and a pairwise t test was performed after normal distribution analysis. Results: In terms of objective evaluation, the SNR obtained by the soft coil was better than that obtained by the hard coil in the supraspinatus PDWI-FSE-COR-FS and T₁WI-FSE-COR sequence, humeral head PDWI-FSE-TRA-FS and T₂WI-FSE-SAG-FS sequence, and the differences were statistically significant (all P < 0.05). The CNR of the images obtained by the soft coil in the suprapinatus PDWI-FSE-COR-FS sequence was better than that obtained by the hard coil, the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). And there were no significant differences in other sequence parameters (all P > 0.05). Comparison of SNR between hard coil and soft coil in water model test showed no statistical significance (P > 0.05). In terms of subjective evaluation, the difference in SNR of each sequence was statistically significant (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: In the shoulder joint MRI examination, the imaging quality of the soft coil is higher than that of the hard coil, which has clinical application and popularization value.