Improved MR angiography: magnetization transfer suppression with variable flip angle excitation and increased resolution.

Results at conventional magnetic resonance (MR) angiography were compared with results at MR imaging with a sequence combining optimized magnetization transfer (MT) saturation and tilted optimized nonsaturating excitation (TONE). Forty images were obtained of five healthy volunteers and five patients with known intracranial vascular abnormalities (four men and six women, aged 22-72 years). Four blinded readers found improved vessel penetration, enhanced vessel-to-background contrast, the better vessel detail in the MT saturation-TONE images than in the conventional three-dimensional time-of-flight MR angiograms.