Three-dimensional time-of-flight MR angiography using selective inversion recovery RAGE with fat saturation and ECG-triggering: application to renal arteries.

A three-dimensional (3D), ECG-triggered, selective inversion recovery (SIR) rapid gradient-echo (RAGE) technique is proposed to obtain MR angiograms of the main renal arteries. By using the selective inversion recovery and fat saturation, the background is significantly suppressed while blood maintains a high signal intensity as compared with conventional 3D time-of-flight (TOF) MR angiography. The sequence is ECG-triggered so that blood in-flow is maximized during systole, and intravoxel dephasing and pulsatile flow artifacts are minimized by collecting data during diastole. As a result, vessel boundary blurring and ghosting artifacts due to background motion are dramatically reduced, and the conspicuity and lumen definition of the arteries are significantly improved. High-quality MR angiograms of the main renal arteries with excellent blood/tissue contrast and suppression of motion artifacts have been consistently obtained for normal volunteers, with the length of visualization being 51 +/- 07 mm for the left, and 57 +/- 06 mm for the right renal arteries, significantly greater than using conventional 3D TOF pulse sequences. Statistical analysis was performed by using a one-sided Student's t test.