Fast magnetic resonance coronary angiography with a three-dimensional stack of spirals trajectory.
In this work, three-dimensional (3D) spiral imaging has been utilized for magnetic resonance coronary angiography. Spiral-based 3D techniques can dramatically reduce imaging time requirements compared with 3D Fourier Transform imaging. The method developed here utilized a "stack of spirals" trajectory, to traverse 3D k-space rapidly. Both thick-slab volumes encompassing the entire coronary tree with isotropic resolution and thin-slab volumes targeted to a particular vessel of interest were acquired. Respiratory compensation was achieved using the diminishing variance algorithm. T2-prepared contrast was also applied in some cases to improve contrast between vessel and myocardium, while off-resonance blurring was minimized by applying a linear correction to the acquired data. Images from healthy volunteers were displayed using a curved reformatting technique to view long segments of vessel in a single projection. The results demonstrate that this 3D spiral technique is capable of producing high-quality coronary magnetic resonance angiograms.
Thedens
D R
DR
Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, California, USA. dan-thedens@uiowa.edu
Irarrazaval
P
P
Sachs
T S
TS
Meyer
C H
CH
Nishimura
D G
DG
D000465:Algorithms; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000379:methods*