Yiu-Cho Chung1, Michael Jerosch-Herold2,
1Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.,
Columbus, OH, United States; 2Radiology, Brigham and Women's
Hospital, MA, United States; 3Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.,
MA, United States; 4Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham and Women's
Hospital, MA, United States; 5Nuclear Medicine, Brigham and
Women's Hospital, MA, United States; 6Cardiovascular Imaging,
Brigham and Women's Hospital, MA, United States
MPRAGE
has excellent T1 contrast and is useful for thrombus imaging. Though blood is
usually suppressed in vessel wall imaging, nonzero blood signal may be useful
in depicting blood and vessel wall. By setting TI longer than the blood null
time, MPRAGE can provide good contrast between blood and vessel wall due to
their intrinsic T1 difference. In a small patient cohort, we used such
approach for MPRAGE, and compared the images with T2w-SPACE. We found that
the grey blood MPRAGE can provide information about the plaque and lumen
that was not obvious in dark blood images.
Keywords