Influence of age on gadoxetic acid disodium-induced transient respiratory motion artifacts in pediatric liver MRI

PURPOSE: Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced liver MRI is frequently compromised by transient severe motion artifacts (TSM) in the arterial phase, which limits image interpretation for the detection and differentiation of focal liver lesions and for the recognition of the arterial vasculature before and after liver transplantation. The purpose of this study was to investigate which patient factors affect TSM in children who undergo Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced liver MRI and whether younger children are affected as much as adolescents. METHODS: One hundred and forty-eight patients (65 female, 83 male, 0.1–18.9 years old), who underwent 226 Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRIs were included retrospectively in this single-center study. The occurrence of TSM was assessed by three readers using a four-point Likert scale. The relation to age, gender, body mass index, indication for MRI, requirement for sedation, and MR repetition was investigated using uni- and multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: In Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRIs, TSM occurred in 24 examinations (10.6%). Patients with TSM were significantly older than patients without TSM (median 14.3 years; range 10.1–18.1 vs. 12.4 years; range 0.1–18.9, p<0.001). TSM never appeared under sedation. Thirty of 50 scans in patients younger than 10 years were without sedation. TSM were not observed in non-sedated patients younger than 10 years of age (p = 0.028). In a logistic regression analysis, age remained the only cofactor independently associated with the occurrence of TSM (hazard ratio 9.152, p = 0.049). CONCLUSION: TSM in Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced liver MRI do not appear in children under the age of 10 years.