Abstract #0876

Black-Blood Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Coronary Artery Wall MRI: A Potential Tool for Kinetic-Modeling-Based Wall Inflammation Assessment

Zhaoyang Fan¹, Jingsi Xie¹, Yi He², Yutaka Natsuaki³, Ning Jin⁴, Daniel S. Berman¹, Debiao Li¹

¹Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ²Radiology, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China; ³Siemens Healthcare, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ⁴Siemens Healthcare, Columbus, OH, United States

Dynamic gadolinium contrast-enhanced (DCE) vessel wall MRI has recently been used to characterize the extent of inflammation in carotid plaques. However, no studies have shown its feasibility in coronary artery wall, presumably due to the technical challenges in imaging such a constantly-moving and ultra-small structure and visually distinguishing the wall from the hyperintense lumen with conventional DCE techniques. The present work aimed to develop a black-blood navigator-gated ECG-triggered T1-weighted sequence for DCE MRI of coronary vessel wall. The sequence allows acquisition of high-spatial-resolution bright blood and black blood images in an interleaved fashion, regardless of time-varying T1 of blood.