Samuel W. Fielden1, John P. Mugler III1,2, Klaus D. Hagspiel2, Christopher M. Kramer2,3, Craig H. Meyer1,2
1Biomedical Engineering, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA; 2Department of Radiology,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA; 3Department of
Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
A refocused Turbo Spin Echo (rTSE) technique for nonconcrast MRA is presented. rTSE hybridizes the increased signal provided by the 180 refocusing RF pulses of RARE and the better flow performance of the fully-refocused gradients and phase alternation of balanced SSFP. Angiograms generated by the rTSE sequence are compared to those generated by a traditional TSE sequence and exhibits higher contrast resolution and vessel sharpness (p < 0.01) with comparable SNR.