Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with advantages of high contrast, no bone artifacts, and arbitrary fault orientation, are widely used in diagnosing head and neck surgery, neurosurgery and oral surgery collar surface diseases. However, artifacts formed by some metallic materials have seriously affected the image quality, and the use of these materials limits the application and accurate diagnosis of MRI in head and neck region.
OBJECTIVE: To study the artifacts of hard cobalt-chromium (Co-Cr) casting alloy, soft Co-Cr casting alloy, gold alloy and 3 kinds of metallic materials in head and neck scan sequence.
METHODS: Five kinds of head and neck of conventional and fast imaging sequences was performed axial scan respectively for three kinds of metal specimen placed in the center of cylindrical water phantom. Artifacts were measured, and the results were performed statistical analysis.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: In 3 kinds of metals with the same MRI imaging sequence, gold alloy produced the smallest artifacts, which was largest in the hard cobalt-chromium, the difference between the two groups was significant (P < 0.05); for the same metal material, spin-echo sequences produced the smallest artifacts, gradient echo sequence produced larger artifacts, echo-planar sequences produced largest artifacts with image deformation. The results suggest that, compared with non-precious metal dental restoration materials, using precious metal as dental restoration materials, can produce the minimum artifacts in the head and neck MRI. Therefore, the optimal MRI can be received via rational selecting metal dental restoration materials and imaging technology.