Advanced in Venous Saturation Pulses at 7T Time-of-Flight Magnetic Resonance Angiography

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Purpose：Conventional pre-saturation pulse for suppressing venous signals cannot be applied to time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography(TOF-MRA) at 7 Tesla MRI due to specific absorption rate(SAR) limitation. The SAR could be attenuated with using low saturation flip angle, but a few repetitions are needed to reach signals below the steady-state signal of the brain tissues. The purpose of this study was to suppress venous system with clinically acceptable acquisition time by using 90 degree flip angle.
Methods：The standard slab-selective radio-frequency and gradient waveform were modified to new-shaped models by minimum-time variable-rate selective excitation(Min-VERSE) algorithm. Excitation slice profile was measured and evaluated by a phantom scan. In volunteer measurement, the vessel-tissue contrast ratio of the sinuses(VTCR_S) and middle cerebral artery(VTCR_MCA) were assessed in correlation to surrounding tissue and compared to the values measured by the conventional TOF(cTOF) pulse sequence.
Results：The experimentally-measured profiles showed that there was good agreement between conventional and modified pulse. The total scan time was 5 min 55 sec(Min-VERSE 90 FA, TR 28 ms) and 8 min 50 sec(90 FA, TR 42 ms). The quantitative results of ROI analysis were nearly similar, except the venous signal and VTCR_S at Min-VERSE 90 FA.
Conclusions：We have presented that the use of Min-VERSE with high flip angle was useful. The total acquisition time was faster about 3 minutes and the signal analysis was hardly different to the values acquired by the values of 90 FA at cTOF. Since 7T MRI has been suitable for ultra-high resolution imaging, our protocol would be used by default for diagnosing various intracranial vascular pathologies.