Manojkumar Saranathan1, Ersin Bayram2, Vijay Nimbargi3, Ramesh Venkatesan3, Naoyuki Takei4, Mitsuharu Miyoshi4, Wei Sun2, James Glockner5
1Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Rochester, MN, USA; 2MR Engineering, GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, USA; 3GE Healthcare, Bangalore, India; 4MR Applied Science Laboratory, GE Yokagawa Medical Systems, Hino, Japan; 5Dept. of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA
Contrast-enhanced MR Angiography (CEMRA) is widely used for evaluation of vascular pathology. Recent concerns about nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) after administration of Gadolinium based contrast agents in patients with compromised renal function have spurred interest in non-contrast MRA methods. SSFP imaging has shown great promise due to its high SNR and short scan times. Robust fat suppression is challenging at high field strengths due to B0 and B1 inhomogeneities. Furthermore, fat saturation pulses perturb the steady state, causing artifacts. We report a novel non-contrast MRA technique that combines an inversion-prepared dual-echo 3D SSFP scan with a two-point Dixon fat-water reconstruction algorithm and demonstrate its potential for imaging the renal arteries.