Flow effects in localized quadratic, partial Fourier MRA

A pulse sequence for inflow-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography, includ ing localized quadratic encoding, partial-Fourier slice selection, and spir al in-plane encoding, is analyzed. The through-plane encoding method is dis cussed in a space-spatial frequency context to illustrate some of its prope rties. This pulse sequence has the advantages of being faster and more robu st to turbulent flow than conventional inflow-enhanced methods. Simulations show the effect of different parameters on the modulation-transfer functio n of the resulting images. A flow phantom is used to verify some of the sim ulation results. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.