In the overall effort to increase the diagnostic efficacy of MRI as an adjunctive technique in the assessment of breast lesions and their staging, it is proposed (1) to demonstrate the feasibility of sequential parallel image acquisition (SPIA) techniques as a method to produce high resolution images of the breasts and axillary lymph nodes in reduced total scantime, (2) to design local coils to provide fat suppression, chemical shift, and contrast optimization techniques, and to increase signal-to-noise ratio in each region of interest and improve resolution, and (3) to optimize patient positioning procedures and compatible variations in coil design to account for differences from one patient to another and to enhance patient comfort and acceptance.
