Zhaoyang Fan1,2, Philip Hodnett1,
John Sheehan1, Xiaoming Bi3, Sven Zuehlsdorff3,
James Carr1, Debiao Li1,2
1Radiology, Northwestern University,
Chicago, IL, United States; 2Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL, United States; 3Cardiac MR R&D,
Siemens Healthcare, Chicago, IL, United States
Noncontrast
hand MRA using ECG-triggered 3D bSSFP with flow-sensitive dephasing (FSD)
preparation has recently been demonstrated in patients with Raynauds disease.
However, a conventional FSD module with flow-sensitizing gradient pulses
applied in both readout and phase-encoding direction simultaneously is only
sensitive to one-direction flow. We proposed a new FSD preparative module
with two FSD sub-modules combined in series. In each submodule, gradient
pulses are applied in one direction only. Its effectiveness was verified on a
flow phantom and healthy volunteer hands. Additionally, a volunteer study was
performed to investigate the MRA quality with FSD bSSFP using
contrast-enhance MRA as reference.