Slough RA, et al. – The physicians conducted this work to assess the impact of the spasmolytic agent hyoscine butylbromide (HBB) on the quality of anatomical and functional imaging of the prostate. The present study showed that administration of HBB significantly enhances the image quality of T2WI images. These outcomes serve evidence for the use of HBB in routine patient preparation prior to prostate mpMRI.

Methods

• In this retrospective study, researchers enrolled 173 patients.
• In this analysis, 87 patients received intravenous HBB prior to scanning (HBB group) and 86 patients did not (non-HBB group).
• They conducted multiparametric (mp) 3 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applying a 32-channel body coil.
• The image quality of T2-weighted imaging (WI), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps, using a five-point Likert scale was analyzed by two radiologists.
• They further evaluated DWI for distortion and artefact (four-point Likert scale), and T2WI for the presence of motion artefact or blurring.
• They evaluated dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) image quality by recording the number of corrupt contrast curve data points.

Results

• The data showed that T2W image quality in the HBB group was significantly higher than in the non-HBB group (3.63±1.11 versus 2.84±0.899); p<0.001.
• It was noted that HBB group also showed significantly less T2W motion and T2W blur than the non-HBB group (23% and 51.7% versus 53.5% and 83.7%, respectively; p<0.001); nevertheless, there was no significant improvement in DWI or ADC image quality, or DWI degree of distortion or artefact.
• Researchers demonstrated that there was a trend towards a lower number of corrupted data points from the contrast curve (2.47±2.44 versus 3.68±2.64), but this did not reach significance (p=0.052).