3D coronary vessel wall imaging utilizing a local inversion technique withspiral image acquisition

Current 2D black blood coronary vessel wall imaging suffers from a relative ly limited coverage of the coronary artery tree. Hence, a 3D approach facil itating more extensive coverage would be desirable. The straightforward com bination of a 3D-acquisition technique together with a dual inversion prepu lse can decrease the effectiveness of the black blood preparation. To minim ize artifacts from insufficiently suppressed blood signal of the nearby blo od pools, and to reduce residual respiratory motion artifacts from the ches t wall, a novel local inversion technique was implemented. The combination of a nonselective inversion prepulse with a 2D selective local inversion pr epulse allowed for suppression of unwanted signal outside a user-defined re gion of interest. Among 10 subjects evaluated using a 3D-spiral readout, th e local inversion pulse effectively suppressed signal from ventricular bloo d, myocardium, and chest wall tissue in all cases. The coronary vessel wall could be visualized within the entire imaging volume. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.