(TOF) The time of flight angiography is used for the imaging of vessels. Usually the sequence type is a gradient echosequences with short TR, acquired with slices perpendicular to the direction of blood flow.
The source of diverse flow effects is the difference between the unsaturated and presaturated spins and creates a bright vascular image without the invasive use of contrast media. Flowing blood moves unsaturated spins from outside the slice into the imaging plane. These completely relaxed spins have full equilibriummagnetization and produce (when entering the imaging plane) a much higher signal than stationary spins if a gradient echo sequence is generated. This flow related enhancement is also referred to as entry slice phenomenon, or inflow enhancement.
Performing a presaturationslab on one side parallel to the slice can selectively destroy the MR signal from the in-flowing blood from this side of the slice. This allows the technique to be flow direction sensitive and to separate arteriograms or venograms. When the local magnetization of moving blood is selectively altered in a region, e.g. by selective excitation, it carries the altered magnetization with it when it moves, thus tagging the selected region for times on the order of the relaxation times.
For maximum flow signal, a complete new part of blood has to enter the slice every repetition (TR) period, which makes time of flight angiography sensitive to flow-velocity. The choice of TR and slice thickness should be appropriate to the expected flow-velocities because even small changes in slice thickness influences the performance of the TOF sequence.
The use of sequential 2 dimensional Fourier transformation (2DFT) slices, 3DFT slabs, or multiple 3D slabs (chunks) are depending on the coverage required and the range of flow-velocities.
3D TOF MRA is routinely used for evaluating the Circle of Willis.
(TRICKS) Time resolved imaging of contrast kinetics is a MRI technique, which increases the temporal resolution of dynamic contrast enhancedmagneticresonanceangiography (CE-MRA) sequences. The K-space is divided into regions by increasing the sampling rate at the lower spatial frequencies and by reducing the sampling rate at the higher spatial frequencies. Since the time duration between two frames is shortened, it can be observed how frequently and how quickly the images are repeated at the exact same location.
TRICKS is particularly useful for dynamic vascular studies with high temporal resolution. TRICKS improves the calculation of the contrast bolus arrival and improves the characterization of arterio-venous malformations (AVMs).
A large network of interconnecting blood vessels at the base of the brain that when visualized resembles a circle, the arteries effectively act as anastomoses for each other. This means that if any one of the communicating arteries becomes blocked, blood can flow from another part of the circle to ensure that blood flow is not compromised.
The circle of Willis is formed by both the internal carotid arteries, entering the brain from each side and the basilar artery, entering posteriorly. The connection of the vertebral arteries forms the basilar artery. The basilar artery divides into the right and left posterior cerebral arteries.
The internal carotid arteries trifurcate into the anterior cerebral artery, middle cerebral artery, and posterior communicating artery.
The two anterior cerebral arteries are joined together anteriorly by the anterior communicating artery. The posterior communicating arteries join the posterior cerebral arteries, completing the circle of Willis. The time of flight angiographyMRI technique allows imaging of the circle of Willis without the need of a contrast medium (best results with high field MRI). A cerebrovasular contrast enhancedmagneticresonanceangiography (MRA) depicts the circle of Willis in addition to the vessels of the neck (carotid and vertebral arteries) with one bolus injection of a contrast agent.
Blood pool MRIcontrast agents with their longer intravascular circulation can be designed to be targeted to necrotic myocardium, to assess myocardial viability, or tumor directed to provide better diagnostic information for various tumors.
A disadvantage of the use of blood pool agents for MRA is that the separation of arteries and veins is more difficult because they are present in both and the overlapping of those vessels is disturbing. This can be solved by e.g. different MIP segmentation algorithms.