Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI
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J Magn Reson Imaging · Jan 2008
Renal T2-weighted turbo-spin-echo imaging with BLADE at 3.0 Tesla: initial experience.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility and image quality of multishot T2-weighted (T2w) renal morphologic imaging based on the acquisition of rotating rectangular strips of k-space data after successive radiofrequency excitations (BLADE technique). ⋯ The SNR did not show significant differences. The overall image quality was rated significantly higher for the T2w-BLADE (P < 0.05). Equally, the presence of disturbing artifacts and the sharpness was ranked significantly better for T2w-BLADE than for the T2w-TSE (P < 0.05). The T2w-BLADE was the preferred sequence in 59% of all cases, the T2w-TSE in 9%.T2w-BLADE sequences seem to be superior for the depiction of the kidneys at 3.0T, particularly due to the decreased number of artifacts and sharper delineation of the organs.
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J Magn Reson Imaging · Jan 2008
Effects of doubling and tripling the spatial resolution in standard 3D contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography of carotid artery disease.
To determine whether three-dimensional (3D) contrast-enhanced MR angiography (CE-MRA) of carotid artery disease may be more effective when performed at double or triple the spatial resolution of the present common clinical standard at 1.5T. ⋯ In patients with carotid artery stenosis, decreasing the voxel volume to 0.5 mm(3) by increasing the scan time from 21 to 40 seconds resulted in sharper depiction of the carotid stenosis. Further decreases in voxel volume, by extending the acquisition time further, did not improve the vessel depiction due to both signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and sharpness losses.