Blood attenuation with SSFP-compatible saturation (BASS).
OBJECTIVE
To investigate a rapid flow-suppression method for improving the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) between the vessel wall and the lumen for cardiovascular imaging applications.


METHODS
In this study a new dark-blood steady-state free precession (SSFP) sequence utilizing two excitation pulses per TR was developed. The first pulse is applied immediately adjacent to the slice of interest, while the second is a conventional slice-selective pulse designed to excite an SSFP signal for the static spins in the slice of interest. The slice-selective pulse is followed by fully refocused gradients along all three imaging axes over each TR. The signal amplitude (SA) from the moving spins excited by the "saturation" pulse is attenuated since they are not fully refocused at the TE.


RESULTS
This work provides confirmation, by both simulation and experiments, that modest adaptations of the basic True-FISP structure can limit unwanted "bright blood" signal within the vessels while simultaneously preserving the contrast and speed advantages of this well-established rapid imaging method.


CONCLUSIONS
Animal imaging trials confirm that dark-blood contrast is achieved with the BASS sequence, which substantially reverses the lumen-to-muscle CNR of a conventional True-FISP "bright blood" acquisition from 14.77 (bright blood) to -13.96 (dark blood) with a modest increase (24.2% of regular TR of SSFP for this implementation) in acquisition time to accommodate the additional slab-selective excitation pulse and gradient pulses.
Lin
Hung-Yu
HY
Department of Radiology, University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
Dale
Brian M
BM
Flask
Chris A
CA
Duerk
Jeffrey L
JL
D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003287:Contrast Media / Q000494:pharmacology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D011673:Pulsatile Flow / Q000502:physiology; D011817:Rabbits
D003287:Contrast Media