High Resolution Time-Of Flight MRA using Slice Selective Saturation Transfer Contrast & Water Excitation Technique For the Visualization of the Lenticulostriate Arteries At 1.5T

Faiza Admiraal-Behloul¹, Evert Blink¹, Bei Zhang¹, Mitsue Miyazaki²

It has been well accepted that Lenticulostriate arteries (LSAs) are nearly impossible to visualize on 1,5T and very difficult at 3T clinical MR systems in healthy volunteers. Therefore, LSAs are mainly studied at 7T. The aim of this preliminary study was to investigate the ability of high resolution 3D time-of flight (TOF) angiography to visualize the LSAs at 1,5 T,using a Slice-Selective Off-Resonance Sinc Pulse-Saturation Transfer Contrast with inclined profile selective excitation and water excitation technique.