Gadolinium
contrast for CE-MRA is typically injected at a fixed, relatively fast (1.5 –
2.0 mL/s) rate. This results in a peaked
bolus profile such that vascular signal intensity (SI) decays during latter k-space
acquisition, leading to blurring and ringing artifacts. A “tailored” test bolus-based predictive
algorithm was developed to determine a patient-individualized multi-phase injection
to achieve any arbitrary arterial SI “plateau” duration. This technique was tested on 10 patients and
compared to 10 patients receiving a fixed 1.6 mL/s contrast injection. The tailored bolus plateau duration was 24
vs. 9 s (p < 0.01) with only a 20% SI loss.
