Improved venous suppression and spatial resolution with SENSE in elliptical centric 3D contrast-enhanced MR angiography

✍ Scribed by Houchun H. Hu; Ananth J. Madhuranthakam; David G. Kruger; John Huston III; Stephen J. Riederer

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 367 KB
• Volume: 52
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0740-3194
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.20216

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The elliptical centric (EC) view order samples a 3DFT acquisition from the center of k‐space outward, and when applied to contrast‐enhanced MR angiography (CE‐MRA) provides intrinsic venous suppression. This is because the veins enhance several seconds after the scan is initiated, and are thus encoded solely by noncentral k‐space frequencies. A separate method, sensitivity encoding (SENSE), accelerates the k‐space sampling rate by reducing the phase FOV or, equivalently, by increasing the k‐space sampling interval, and has been used to increase spatiotemporal resolution. We hypothesized that by combining SENSE with EC, sampling of central k‐space would be accelerated and the k‐space radius at which the veins first showed contrast enhancement would be increased over a reference scan, thus providing improved venous suppression and spatial resolution without additional scan time. This hypothesis was studied with the use of phantom and carotid CE‐MRA experiments, and the results demonstrated an approximate 25% reduction in venous signal when SENSE was used. Magn Reson Med 52:761–765, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.