Ann-Kathrin Homagk1, Reiner Umathum1, Matthias Korn1, Marc-Andr Weber2, Peter Hallscheidt2, Wolfhard Semmler1, Michael Bock1
1Medical Physics in Radiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany; 2Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany
The present study proposes a catheter system with an expandable coil which combines the advantages of a small insertion diameter and an increased SNR and penetration depth due to the expanded coil surface. The catheter system was tested on two healthy anesthetized pigs. The images acquired during the expansion of the coil revealed the expected higher signal intensity once the coil was expanded. For high-resolution intravascular imaging, a flow-compensated 2D FLASH sequence with the acquisition of projection data for retrospective gating was implemented. The experiments demonstrated the capability of this catheter design for tracking and high-resolution vessel wall imaging.