title: Coronary arteries: breath-hold MR angiography.
abstract: The authors describe a method for performance of ultrafast magnetic resonance (MR) angiography of coronary arteries with a standard clinical MR system and a body coil. Each image was obtained within a single breath hold by using an electrocardiography-gated, segmented, ultrafast, gradient-echo pulse sequence with an incremental excitation flip angle for the eight phase-encoding steps acquired per segment. By using overlapping 4-mm-thick sections, the coronary arteries were routinely depicted from the coronary ostia distally at MR in healthy subjects. Ultrafast MR angiography of the coronary arteries is feasible with use of a standard body coil. This technique offers considerable potential as an investigational tool and, with further development, may become a clinically useful imaging application.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Charles A. Dana Research Institute, Boston, MA.
authors.forename: R R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Edelman
authors.forename: W J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Manning
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Burstein
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Paulin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001158:Arteries / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged