David Ratering1, Christof Baltes1,
Christine Lohmann2, Christian M. Matter2, Markus Rudin1,3
1Institute for Biomedical Engineering,
University and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 2Institute of
Physiology, University Zurich and Cardiology University Hospital Zurich,
Zurich, Switzerland; 3Institute of Pharmacology & Toxicology, University
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
High-resolution
magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) enables detection and monitoring of
atherosclerosis in mouse models of human disease. However, high-resolution
MRA suffers from long acquisition times putting high demands on the animals
physiological stability. Therefore the feasibility of accelerated MRA of
murine supra-aortic vasculature using SENSE was investigated with regard to
lesion detection and quantitative morphometric analysis. Evaluations revealed
that data collection with acceleration factors R ≤ 3.3 had only minor
effects on vessel delineation. No significant differences could be found for
the morphometric assessment of stenotic lesions and the determination of
degree of stenosis when comparing accelerated to fully-sampled data.