Steady State MR Angiography of the Carotid Arteries: Are Intravascular Agents Necessary? a Feasibility Study to Evaluate the Potential of Gadobenate Dimeglumine for Combined First Pass and High-Resolution Steady State Vascular Imaging

Alessandro Napoli¹, Carlo Catalano, Michele Anzidei, Roberto Passariello

High-resolution Steady-State (SS) imaging of arterial territories are successfully implemented as an adjunct to first-pass (FP) acquisition, thanks to the introduction of blood-pool agents (BPa); nevertheless, BPa are expensive and not widely available. For this reasons we tested the potential of gadobenate dimeglumine (MultiHance) for high resolution SS imaging as an addition to conventional FP CE-MRA for the detection of relevant stenosis of the carotid arteries. Our study demonstrates that the increased spatial resolution attainable on SS images combined with the elevated contrast enhancement of MultiHance permits improved detection of arterial stenoses, with diagnostic performance comparable to CTA and DSA.