Affiliation:
1. Department of Radiology, Kantonsspital Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland
2. Department of Radiology, Kantonsspital Münsterlingen, Switzerland
3. Angiology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland
Abstract
Purpose A retrospective analysis of the diagnostic performance of the timed arterial compression (TAC) technique, which allows freezing of the contrast bolus during first-pass contrast-enhanced (CE) magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) to diagnose vascular pathologies in the hand. Material and Methods A total of 14 consecutive CE-MRAs of the hand were acquired by using the TAC technique. By inflating a blood pressure cuff up to 200 mm Hg triggered to the arterial contrast filling of the hand, prolonged measurement times up to 144 seconds, with a spatial resolution of 0.59 × 0.59 × 0.8 mm3, could be realized. Overall image qualities, arterial signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and vessel conspicuity besides the final diagnosis were evaluated. Results All 14 TAC-CE-MRAs of the hand were successfully accomplished without any adverse events and yielded, in all cases, a final diagnosis with a high total number of vascular pathologies (57). High arterial SNR and CNR values exceeding the soil of 85 and 60, respectively, resulted. Thus, overall vessel visibility (>90%), vessel conspicuity (mean Δ signal intensity [SI]/mm = 1,193) and image quality on a per patient level (>60%) were rated as excellent or good. Conclusions TAC-CE-MRA of the hand offers high diagnostic performance because of its increased spatial resolution while preserving contrast, which allowed detection of tiny stenoses of the digital arteries.
Subject
Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging,General Medicine
Cited by
2 articles.
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