1Department of Medical Imaging, Faculty of Life Sciences, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan, 2Radiological Center, Fukui Prefectural Hospital, Fukui, Japan
We evaluated the uniformity of
the intracranial vascular signal using a Silent MR angiography (MRA).
Experiments with phantoms and healthy subjects revealed that this sequence
improved the uniformity of the vascular signal under the condition of complex
flow. Silent MRA improved contrast, coefficient of variation, and accuracy for
intracranial blood vessels with turbulent flow compared with time-of-flight
MRA. The signal intensities obtained by Silent MRA were independent of flow
conditions. Although it has limited spatial resolution and requires additional
imaging time, this sequence may have the potential to improve the image quality
of intracranial blood vessels.
