Table 2.

Image quality parameters of 35 computed tomography (CT) examinations in comparison to the three T1-weighted MRI sequences: incoherent GRE (gradient echo), volume interpolated GRE, and UTE (ultrashort echo time)

Image quality parameter	Chest CT	Incoherent GRE	Volume interpolated GRE	UTE
Mean values of the image quality scores (in parentheses standard deviations)
Overall image quality	4.4 (0.7)	3.5 (0.8)†,ǂ	3.6 (0.9)†,ǂ	4.1 (0.8)
Contrast	4.7 (0.4)	4.3 (0.5)†,ǂ	4.1 (0.6)†	3.9 (0.6)†
Sharpness	4.4 (0.7)	3.5 (0.7)†,ǂ	3.5 (0.8)†,ǂ	4.1 (0.9)
Presence of artefacts	4.1 (0.8)	3.1 (0.8)†,ǂ	3.4 (0.8)†,ǂ	3.9 (0.8)

Wilcoxon rank sum tests evaluated differences between each of the MRI sequences in comparison to CT examinations as well as between the three MRI sequences

^†p < 0.05 indicated statistical significance between the MRI sequence and the CT examinations

ǂ p < 0.05 indicated statistical significance between each of the GRE sequences in comparison to UTE images