• Ioannis Koktzoglou, Joel R Meyer, William J Ankenbrandt, Shivraman Giri, Davide Piccini, Michael O Zenge, Oisin Flanagan, Tina Desai, NavYash Gupta, and Robert R Edelman.
• Department of Radiology, NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, Illinois, USA; The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2015 Apr 1; 41 (4): 1150-6.

PurposeTo optimize and preliminarily evaluate a three-dimensional (3D) radial balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) arterial spin labeled (ASL) sequence for nonenhanced MR angiography (MRA) of the extracranial carotid arteries.Materials And MethodsThe carotid arteries of 13 healthy subjects and 2 patients were imaged on a 1.5 Tesla MRI system using an undersampled 3D radial bSSFP sequence providing a scan time of ∼4 min and 1 mm(3) isotropic resolution. A hybridized scheme that combined pseudocontinuous and pulsed ASL was used to maximize arterial coverage. The impact of a post label delay period, the sequence repetition time, and radiofrequency (RF) energy configuration of pseudocontinuous labeling on the display of the carotid arteries was assessed with contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) measurements. Faster, higher undersampled 2 and 1 min scans were tested.ResultsUsing hybridized ASL MRA and a 3D radial bSSFP trajectory, arterial CNR was maximized with a post label delay of 0.2 s, repetition times ≥ 2.5 s (P < 0.05), and by eliminating RF energy during the pseudocontinuous control phase (P < 0.001). With higher levels of undersampling, the carotid arteries were displayed in ≤ 2 min.ConclusionNonenhanced MRA using hybridized ASL with a 3D radial bSSFP trajectory can display long lengths of the carotid arteries with 1 mm(3) isotropic resolution.© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

29 keywords...

hide…