Mayil Krishnam1, Sachin Malik1,2, Yutaka Natsuaki3, Swati Deshmane1, Derek Lohan1, James Paul Finn1, Stefan G. Ruehm1, Gerhard Laub3
1Department of Radiology, Ronald Reagan Medical Center, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA; 3Siemens Medical Solutions, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Navigator gated cardiac triggered inversion recovery steady-state free-precession (IR-SSFP) magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) has been utilized to image the renal arteries without breath holding or intravenous contrast. Following further optimization, we have implemented this novel sequence on our 1.5T MR scanner to assess the renal arteries with a scan time of approximately 5 minutes. IR-SSFP had better visibility, less motion artifacts, and satisfactory stenosis detection compared to contrast-enhanced MRA. Our results demonstrate that IR-SSFP MRA of the renal arteries provides high image quality and sufficient signal-noise ratio and contrast-noise ratio for the diagnosis of renal artery stenosis.