Application of virtual reality on MRA data of complex vascular structures

During the last years because of the progress in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) has become a serious alternativ e to conventional X-ray angiography. The potential of MRA in combination wi th methods for three-dimensional reconstruction will be presented and diffe rent methods for image post-processing are discussed based on a number of c ases. The examinations were performed on a clinical 1.5 T magnetic resonanc e tomograph (Siemens Vision, Erlangen) using conventional MR angiography se quences. The different options of post-processing were carried out online o n the console and offline using dedicated workstations (Siemens Virtuoso an d CHILI). Discussion: Complex post-processing procedures are applied to different are as like pulmonary vasculature, thoracic aorta, abdominal aorta,and renal tr ansplant arteries. Different diagnostic values can be seen for the variety of three-dimensional reconstruction methods. According to our experience vo lume rendering has been selected as the method of choice due to the time ne eded for reconstruction and the information content of the resulting image.