CORONARY-ARTERIES - BREATH-HOLD MR ANGIOGRAPHY

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, ultra-fast, 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. Ultra-fast 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.