High-spatial-resolution 3D balanced turbo field-echo technique for MR angiography of the renal arteries: initial experience

PURPOSE: To compare a multislab balanced turbo field-echo magnetic resonance (MR) angiographic technique, without the use of a contrast agent, with digital subtraction angiography (DSA) for imaging of the renal arteries. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-five randomly selected patients (eight women and 17 men; age range, 27-88 years; mean age, 72 years) suspected of having renal artery stenosis underwent both DSA and balanced turbo field-echo MR angiography. A consensus result was obtained among three radiologists in evaluation of main renal arteries on balanced turbo field-echo images and DSA images. Sensitivity, specificity, and negative and positive predictive values of the balanced turbo field-echo technique were calculated, and receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed for depiction of hemodynamically significant stenosis. Cohen kappa analysis was used to assess agreement between the two imaging methods in grading of stenoses and depiction of significant stenosis. Accessory renal arteries also were evaluated. RESULTS: Fifty main renal arteries and 11 accessory arteries were fully depicted with DSA. DSA depicted 11 stenotic lesions in the main renal arteries. In comparison, balanced turbo field-echo MR angiography enabled visualization of 46 of 50 main renal arteries to their first branching points and depicted 10 of 11 accessory arteries. Sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value, and positive predictive value of this technique for depiction of significant stenosis were 100% (four of four), 98% (41 of 42), 100% (41 of 41), and 80% (four of five), respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.988. kappa was 0.782 for grading of stenoses and 0.877 for depiction of significant stenosis. CONCLUSION: Multislab balanced turbo field-echo imaging has potential as an MR angiography technique for depiction of normal and diseased renal arteries.status: publishe

Automatic determination of the dynamic geometry of abdominal aortic aneurysm from MR with application to wall stress simulations

The current surgical intervention criterion for abdominal aortic aneurysm is based on the maximum transverse diameter of the aorta. Recent research advances indicate that a better rupture predictor may be derived from the wall stress, which can be computed with the finite element method. An essential prerequisite for this modelling is an accurate description of the geometry of the aneurysm. We developed an automatic method to derive the dynamic patient-specific aneurysm geometry from non-contrast enhanced MRA balanced turbo field images. The slices of our 2D-scanned volumes are registered onto 3D-scanned volumes to restore spatial coherence. The resulting images are noise-filtered and the enddiastolic volume is segmented with an active objects technique (deformable models). The resulting geometrical model is propagated to the remaining phases using the correlation between grey value profiles on the surface as an external force for the active object. From our segmentations we derived tetrahedral finite element meshes which were used as the input for finite element wall stress simulations

Implications of SENSE MR in routine clinical practice

Sensitivity encoding (SENSE) uses multiple MRI receive coil elements to encode spatial information in addition to traditional gradient encoding. Requiring less gradient encodings translates into shorter scan times, which is extremely beneficial in many clinical applications. SENSE is available to routine diagnostic imaging for the past 2 years. This paper highlights the use of SENSE with scan time reduction factors up to 6 in contrast-enhanced MRA, routine abdominal imaging, mammography, cardiac and neuro imaging. It is shown that SENSE has opened new horizons in both routine and advanced MR imaging. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.SCOPUS: re.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe