Journal of cardiovascular magnetic resonance : official journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance
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J Cardiovasc Magn Reson · Oct 2009
High resolution carotid black-blood 3T MR with parallel imaging and dedicated 4-channel surface coils.
Most of the carotid plaque MR studies have been performed using black-blood protocols at 1.5 T without parallel imaging techniques. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a multi-sequence, black-blood MR protocol using parallel imaging and a dedicated 4-channel surface coil for vessel wall imaging of the carotid arteries at 3 T. ⋯ The findings of this study indicate that high resolution carotid black-blood 3 T MR with parallel imaging is a fast, reproducible and robust method to assess carotid atherosclerotic plaque in vivo and this method is ready to be used in clinical practice.