Noncontrast MRA at 3T

Mitsue Miyazaki^1,2, Yuichi Yamashita², Andrew Wheaton¹, Wayne Dannels¹, Robert Anderson¹, Leping Zha¹, Satoshi Sugiura²

Despite the recent advancements in 3T, non-contrast MRA faces many problems such as a specific absorption rate (SAR) and B1 inhomogeneity. The B1 wavelength effect caused by conventional quadrature RF transmission makes shading or nonuniform signal intensity unavoidable, especially in abdominal and peripheral MRA. In this study, we have adjusted the pulse sequences to lower SAR and addressed the signal shading issue by applying multi-phase RF transmission.