Arterial flow determined with Half Fourier echo-planar imaging

Background. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become a powerful imaging modality to quantify blood flow. To gain insight of the hemodynamics of the human cardiovascular system, acquisition time of NIR images must be reduce d. It is necessary to produce faster imaging methods to avoid motion artifa cts, such as blurring and ghosting, which alter the image quality. To solve this problem a flow-encoded Echo-Planar Imaging (EPI) sequence combined wi th a Half Fourier method is proposed to determine blood flow in the cardiov ascular system. Methods. This imaging modality was used to quantify blood flow in large ves sels such as the human aorta. We acquired transaxial 128 X 128 images, with a slice of I-cm thickness and 2.5 mm in-plane resolution. All these images were used to measure blood flow in the ascending aorta and descending aort a of nine healthy male volunteers and one female volunteer, ages 22-35 year s. Results. Velocity profiles and blood flow maps were obtained from healthy v olunteers and compared with other imaging techniques. Conclusions. It has been demonstrated that Half Fourier EPI flow sequence c an become a suitable flow measurement technique for real-time magnetic reso nance angiography. It provides us with morphological and functional informa tion of the cardiovascular system. (C) 2001 IMSS. Published by Elsevier Sci ence Inc.