ABDOMINAL PHASE-CONTRAST MR-ANGIOGRAPHY - BREATH-HOLD VERSUS NON-BREATH-HOLD TECHNIQUES

Breath-hold magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is now replacing many non- breath-hold pulse sequences in the upper abdomen because of faster ima ging times and improved image quality. The authors compared non-breath -hold cine phase-contrast (PC) and breath-hold 2D phase-contrast (2DPC ) magnetic resonance (MR) angiograms of the main portal vein (MPV) and superior mesenteric artery (SMA) in 12 volunteers, All angiograms wer e graded in overall image quality, vessel conspicuity, and signal-to-n oise ratios (SNR), In the MPV MR angiograms, the breath-hold 2DPC sequ ence produced better images than the non-breath-hold cine PC sequence as graded by overall image quality (P = .016) and SNR (P = .004), Conv ersely, in the SMA MR angiograms, the non-breath-hold cine PC sequence produced better images than the breath-hold sequence in terms of over all image quality (P = .008) and SNR (P = .008), By reducing the most significant cause of image artifacts, (ie, using a breath-hold 2DPC se quence to decrease respiratory misregistration of the MPV, and using a cardiac-gated cine PC sequence to minimize pulsatile artifacts of the SMA), one can clearly optimize the quality of MR angiography.