Thomas William Okell1, Peter Schmitt2,
Xiaoming Bi3, Michael Andrew Chappell1,4, Rob Hendrikus
Tijssen1, Karla L. Miller1, Peter Jezzard1
1FMRIB Centre, Department
of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United
Kingdom; 2MR Application & Workflow Development, Siemens AG,
Healthcare Sector, Erlangen, Germany; 3Cardiovascular MR R&D,
Siemens Healthcare, Chicago, IL, United States; 4Institute of
Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United
Kingdom
The ability to assess the functional status of cerebral arteries is important for patients with cerebrovascular disease. In this work we combine a vessel-encoded arterial spin labeling preparation with a four-dimensional balanced steady-state free precession readout to obtain dynamic vessel selective angiograms of the four major arteries feeding the brain non-invasively and without the use of contrast agents. This sequence may also be used in dynamic 2D mode to considerably accelerate the acquisition, enabling it to fit easily within a busy clinical protocol.