This work presents a two-dimensional (2D) multishot echo-planar imagin
g (EPI) technique for magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) of individu
al coronary arteries in a 17-heart-beat breath-hold. Conventional 2D a
nd 3D segmented gradient-echo (GRE) coronary MRA requires repetitive e
xcitation of the same slice or slab within each cardiac cycle, which c
an result in reduced blood signal and in motion artifacts. Two-dimensi
onal multishot EPI can address these limitations by eliminating multip
le excitations per cardiac cycle, using large flip-angle excitations,
markedly reducing the data acquisition window, and performing oblique
multislice 2D imaging. The goal of this study was to assess the feasib
ility of breath-hold 2D multishot EPI for multislice coronary MRA and
to demonstrate its reliability by consistently acquiring high-quality
images of the coronary arteries in a series of 16 volunteers.