Abstract #2155

Waltering K, Nassenstein K, Eggebrecht H, Schlosser T, Hunold P, Barkhausen J

For the diagnosis of coronary artery disease, invasive coronary artery angiography must still be considered the standard of reference. But recently, breath-hold MR coronary angiography (MRCA) has become feasible using different sequences which have not been compared so far. Following injection of extracellular contrast-agents, signal-to-noise- and contrast-to-noise-ratios rapidly decrease due to the short plasma-half-life-time. Therefore, intravascular compounds with constant blood and myocardial T1-times over several minutes are preferable for the comparison of different breath-hold sequences for MRCA. Our results show an overall improved image quality for IR-SSFP compared to FLASH sequences. Therefore, we recommend SSFP techniques for contrast-enhanced MRCA.