Abstract #3901

Flow Inversion-Prepared Non-Contrast Enhancement in the Steady State (FINESS): A Novel SSFP-Dixon Technique for Non-Contrast MR Angiography of the Renal Arteries

Manojkumar Saranathan¹, Ersin Bayram², Vijay Nimbargi³, Ramesh Venkatesan³, Naoyuki Takei⁴, Mitsuharu Miyoshi⁴, Wei Sun², James Glockner⁵

¹Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Rochester, MN, USA; ²MR Engineering, GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, USA; ³GE Healthcare, Bangalore, India; ⁴MR Applied Science Laboratory, GE Yokagawa Medical Systems, Hino, Japan; ⁵Dept. of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

Contrast-enhanced MR Angiography (CEMRA) is widely used for evaluation of vascular pathology. Recent concerns about nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) after administration of Gadolinium based contrast agents in patients with compromised renal function have spurred interest in non-contrast MRA methods. SSFP imaging has shown great promise due to its high SNR and short scan times. Robust fat suppression is challenging at high field strengths due to B0 and B1 inhomogeneities. Furthermore, fat saturation pulses perturb the steady state, causing artifacts. We report a novel non-contrast MRA technique that combines an inversion-prepared dual-echo 3D SSFP scan with a two-point Dixon fat-water reconstruction algorithm and demonstrate its potential for imaging the renal arteries.