MR-ANGIOGRAPHY OF THE SUPRAAORTIC ARTERIES USING A DEDICATED HEAD ANDNECK COIL - IMAGE QUALITY AND ASSESSMENT OF STENOSES

Our purpose was to evaluate a dedicated head and neck coil for demonst ration of supra-aortic arteries with optimised magnetic resonance angi ography techniques. We performed 47 examinations with a 1.5-T system. We used coronal 3D fast imaging with steady precession (FISP), axial 3 D tilted optimised nonsaturating excitation (TONE) and 2D fast low-ang le shot (FLASH) for the carotid bifurcation, axial 3D TONE with or wit hout magnetisation transfer (MT) for intracranial arteries, and axial 3D FISP or TONE for the aortic arch. Evaluation included visual assess ment of image quality and grading of stenoses near the carotid bifurca tion; digital subtraction angiography was used as the reference method . Axial 3D TONE gave superior image quality at the carotid bifurcation , MT-TONE intracranially, and 3D FISP for the aortic arch vessels. Nev ertheless, sensitivity and specificity for detection of significant st enoses were similar with coronal 3D FISP (96.3 %, 94.0 %), axial 3D TO NE (92.6 %, 92.5 %) and axial 2D FLASH (96.3 %, 86.6 %), Image quality at the aortic arch needs further improvement.