Manojkumar Saranathan1, Ersin Bayram2,
James F. Glockner3
1Applied Science Lab, GE Healthcare,
Rochester, MN, United States; 2GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, United
States; 3Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States
While
contrast-enhanced MR Angiography (CEMRA) is widely used for evaluation of
vascular pathology, recent nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) concerns
following administration of Gadolinium based contrast agents have spurred
interest in non-contrast MRA methods. Balanced steady state free precession
(b-SSFP) imaging has shown great promise due to its high SNR and short scan
times. We propose a balanced SSFP-Dixon technique with a novel group-encoded
k-space segmentation scheme for breath-held non-contrast MRA.