Flow Independent Breast MR Angiography using a Variable Flip Angle Turbo Spin Echo Sequence

Yi Wang^1,2, Karl Diedrich², Glen Morrell², Allison Payne², Dennis L. Parker^1,2

Breast tumor growth is highly dependent on angiogenesis. Visualization of the breast vasculature helps assisting pre-surgical staging, treatment planning, detection of tumor reoccurrence and post-treatment evaluation in breast cancer management. For example, in Magnetic Resonance guided High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound, treatment planning and control would be improved by characterizing the vascular distribution around the target lesions and including the resulting convective effects in the appropriate models. Knowledge of the vasculature is also useful at the pre-treatment planning stage where an accurate segmentation of the treatment volume on a voxel-by-voxel basis is desired. Even though contrast-enhanced MRI has becoming a standard tool for breast cancer diagnosis, the association between contrast injection and the development of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis has raised concern, especially for patients with renal failure. To reduce these concerns, non-contrast enhanced breast vessel imaging has been investigated using a peripheral pulse gate-triggered half-Fourier turbo spin echo sequence. In this work, an untriggered variable flip angle turbo spin echo sequence was explored as a non-contrast flow-independent MR angiography technique to achieve breast vasculature imaging.