A prospective study of 52 patients with various focal liver lesions was carried out using a multislice-gradient echo sequence and this was compared with spin-echo sequences. The multislice-gradient echo sequence provides the possibility of obtaining heavily T1-weighted images of the entire liver during one examination, thereby reducing the time of the examination. Contrast is significantly better than that of a T1-weighted spin-echo sequence (p greater than 0.05). The multislice-gradient echo sequence examination, taking 5.4 minutes, provides good and diagnostically useful image quality.