Fast magnetic resonance coronary angiography with a three-dimensional stack of spirals trajectory

Magn Reson Med. 1999 Jun;41(6):1170-9. doi: 10.1002/(sici)1522-2594(199906)41:6<1170::aid-mrm13>3.0.co;2-j.

Abstract

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.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Coronary Vessels / anatomy & histology*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods
  • Magnetic Resonance Angiography / methods*