Jun Isogai1, Mitsue Miyazaki2,
Hideo Hatakeyama1, Takeshi Shimada1, Takashi Yamada1,
Tomoko Miyata3, Kenji Yodo3, Ken Kudou3
1Radiology, Hasuda Hospital, Hasuda,
Saitama, Japan; 2Toshiba Medical Research Institute USA, United
States; 3Toshiba Medical Systems Corp., Japan
Visualization
of toe arteries is quite difficult using conventional nonenhanced MR
angiography, such as time-of-flight due to the tortuous arterial trees and
slow-velocity, especially in older female toes. Gadolinium-enhanced MRA also
has several problems with injection rates, the amount of contrast material,
and the separation of arteries from veins. Due to the recent concerns of
Gadolinium-related Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis (NSF), nonenhanced MRA
solutions have gained interest. Depiction of small arteries of the toes was
investigated using time-spatial labeling inversion pulse (time-SLIP) in
combination with a swap phase encode extended data (SPEED) acquisition.