High-resolution time-resolved contrast-enhanced MR abdominal and pulmonary angiography using a Spiral-TRICKS sequence

Both high spatial resolution and high temporal resolution are desirable for contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CE-MRA) in order to depict the arterial vasculature. In this work a fast MR pulse sequence (spiral time-resolved imaging with contrast kinetics (Spiral-TRICKS)) with spiral readout in-plane and Cartesian slice encoding was developed whereby the slices are partitioned into multiple regions and acquire n the order used with the TRICKS sequence. The combination of highly efficient spiral sampling with TRICKS acquisition significantly reduced imaging time requirements. A unit second temporal reconstructed frame rate could be achieved for threedimensional (3D) CE-MRA without undersampling of the spiral trajectories. Image quality was improved through spiral trajectory measurement and field-map correction. Phantom and volunteer studies were performed to demonstrate the feasibility of this technique.