Non-Contrast Thoracic MRA within Single Breath-Hold using Highly-Accelerated Parallel Imaging

Jian Xu^1,2, Kellyanne Mcgorty¹, Ruth Lim¹, Mary Bruno¹, Monvadi Srichai¹, Daniel Kim¹, Daniel Sodickson¹

ECG-triggered CE-MRA of the thoracic aorta is challenging, due to competing demands of high spatial resolution and high temporal resolution within a breath-hold (BH). ECG-triggered NC-MRA is an alternative method for patients with poor intravenous access or contraindications to gadolinium administration without subtraction. ECG-triggered NC-MRA based on T2-prepared and fat suppressed balanced steady state free precession imaging with navigator gating has been shown to produce good image quality, but can take approximately 10 minutes. We propose to perform single BH ECG-triggered NC-MRA of the thoracic aorta using highly accelerated parallel imaging and compare it against ECG-triggered CE-MRA.