(1) Background: Highly flexible adaptive image receive (AIR) coil has become available for clinical use. The present study aimed to evaluate the performance of AIR anterior array coil in lung MR imaging using a zero echo time (ZTE) sequence compared with conventional anterior array (CAA) coil. (2) Methods: Sixty-six patients who underwent lung MR imaging using both AIR coil (ZTE-AIR) and CAA coil (ZTE-CAA) were enrolled. Image quality of ZTE-AIR and ZTE-CAA was quantified by calculating blur metric value, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of lung parenchyma. Image quality was qualitatively assessed by two independent radiologists. Lesion detection capabilities for lung nodules and emphysema and/or lung cysts were evaluated. Patients’ comfort levels during examinations were assessed. (3) Results: SNR and CNR of lung parenchyma were higher (both p < 0.001) in ZTE-AIR than in ZTE-CAA. Image sharpness was superior in ZTE-AIR (p < 0.001). Subjective image quality assessed by two independent readers was superior (all p < 0.05) in ZTE-AIR. AIR coil was preferred by 64 of 66 patients. ZTE-AIR showed higher (all p < 0.05) sensitivity for sub-centimeter nodules than ZTE-CAA by both readers. ZTE-AIR showed higher (all p < 0.05) sensitivity and accuracy for detecting emphysema and/or cysts than ZTE-CAA by both readers. (4) Conclusions: The use of highly flexible AIR coil in ZTE lung MR imaging can improve image quality and patient comfort. Application of AIR coil in parenchymal imaging has potential for improving delineation of low-density parenchymal lesions and tiny nodules.
We investigated the capability of a trained deep learning (DL) model with a convolutional neural network (CNN) in a different scanning environment in terms of ameliorating the quality of synthetic fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images. The acquired data of 319 patients obtained from the retrospective review were used as test sets for the already trained DL model to correct the synthetic FLAIR images. Quantitative analyses were performed for native synthetic FLAIR and DL-FLAIR images against conventional FLAIR images. Two neuroradiologists assessed the quality and artifact degree of the native synthetic FLAIR and DL-FLAIR images. The quantitative parameters showed significant improvement on DL-FLAIR in all individual tissue segments and total intracranial tissues than on the native synthetic FLAIR (p < 0.0001). DL-FLAIR images showed improved image quality with fewer artifacts than the native synthetic FLAIR images (p < 0.0001). There was no significant difference in the preservation of the periventricular white matter hyperintensities and lesion conspicuity between the two FLAIR image sets (p = 0.217). The quality of synthetic FLAIR images was improved through artifact correction using the trained DL model on a different scan environment. DL-based correction can be a promising solution for ameliorating the quality of synthetic FLAIR images to broaden the clinical use of synthetic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).