NON-CONTRAST BREATH-HELD RENAL MR ANGIOGRAPHY

这个子项目是利用这些资源的众多研究子项目之一

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. While contrast-enhanced MR Angiography (CEMRA) is widely used for evaluation of vascular pathology, recent nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) concerns following administration of Gadolinium based contrast agents have spurred interest in non-contrast MRA methods. Balanced steady state free precession (b-SSFP) imaging [1] has shown great promise due to its high SNR and short scan times and has been successful in coronary and renal artery imaging. Robust fat suppression remains challenging at high field strengths due to B0 and B1 inhomogeneities. Conventional fat saturation compromises the SSFP steady state, causing ghosting artifacts. We propose GUINNESS (Group-encoded Ungated Inversion Nulling for Non-contrast Enhancement in the Steady State) a balanced SSFP-Dixon 3D technique with a novel group-encoded k-space segmentation scheme for breath-held non-contrast MRA. To read about other projects ongoing at the Lucas Center, please visit http://rsl.stanford.edu/ (Lucas Annual Report and ISMRM 2011 Abstracts)