Time-resolved contrast-enhanced coronary magnetic resonance angiography with highly constrained projection reconstruction.
Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) is a promising technique for coronary artery imaging. The blood signal changes during the contrast injection will result in image artifacts, blurring and relatively low signal-to-noise ratio, when the k-space segments from different cardiac cycles are combined to reconstruct the final image as "time averaged." Thus, it is important to acquire data during maximal blood signal enhancement for first-pass, contrast-enhanced MRA, and relatively high temporal resolution is required. This work demonstrated the feasibility of highly constrained backprojection reconstruction for time-resolved, contrast-enhanced coronary MRA. With this method, the temporal resolution can be increased. In addition, coronary artery images around blood signal enhancement peak have significantly improved contrast-to-noise ratio and suppressed artifacts compared to the composite images which were collected during a much longer acquisition time during substantial blood signal changes.
Department of Radiology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, USA.
Lan
L
Ge
Xiaoming
X
Bi
Peng
P
Lai
Debiao
D
Li
D000465:Algorithms; D001011:Aorta / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D003287:Contrast Media; D019786:Gadolinium DTPA; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D019028:Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cine / Q000379:methods*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
D003287:Contrast Media; D019786:Gadolinium DTPA