Automated unwrapping of MR phase images applied to BOLD MR-venography at 3 Tesla
✍ Scribed by Alexander Rauscher; Markus Barth; Jürgen R. Reichenbach; Rudolf Stollberger; Ewald Moser
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2003
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 498 KB
- Volume
- 18
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1053-1807
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Purpose:
To improve the diagnostic value of bold mr-venography by removing artifacts related to phase wrapping, particularly in regions of large background susceptibilities at high magnetic field strengths.
Materials and methods:
High resolution, t(2)(*)-weighted, single echo images were acquired on a 3 t system (medspec 30/80 avance, bruker medical, ettlingen, germany) with a three-dimensional, first order velocity compensated gradient echo sequence using a quadrature transmit/receive birdcage head coil. data of nine healthy subjects and 19 patients were evaluated (age range: 27 to 76 years). to achieve improved mr-venograms, a fully automated region-growing phase unwrapping algorithm and subsequent high pass filtering were applied to phase images prior to the computation of minimum intensity projections.
Results:
Considerably improved visualization of venous structures in regions of large background susceptibility-induced field inhomogeneities is demonstrated in healthy subjects and patients with brain tumors.
Conclusion:
Bold mr venograms are improved compared to previous post-processing algorithms. it is now feasible to obtain high-resolution images also in inhomogeneous regions, which increases the clinical potential of bold mr-venography.