Testing diagnostic quality after speeding up prostate MRI by reducing the number of echo-trains in T2-weighted TSE.

Motivation: Increasing prostate cancer cases are leading to a rising demand for prostate MRI, which is a time-consuming protocol. Speeding up of this protocol will help relieve the rising pressure on the healthcare system. Goal(s): To speed up the T2W TSE by undersampling the data, while maintaining the diagnostic outcome. Approach: Echo-trains with center-lines farthest from the k-space center are removed, to undersample the data semi-incoherently , followed by a Compressed Sense reconstruction. Results: Up to 17% time gain can be achieved while the diagnostic outcome remains unaffected. Impact: The scan time of T2W TSE can be reduced by selectively removing echo-trains based on their center-line distance to the k-space center, without affecting the diagnostic outcome, defined by the PI-RADS score and qualitative parameter ratings.