(PCA) With this method images of the blood flow-velocity (or any other movement of tissue) are produced.
The MRI signal contains both amplitude and phase information.
The phase information can be used with subtraction of images with and without a velocity encodinggradient. The signal will be directly proportional to the velocity because of the relation between blood flow-velocity and signal intensity.
This is the strength of PCA, complete suppression of stationary tissue (no velocity - no signal), the direct velocity of flow is being imaged, while in TOF (Inflow) angiography, tissue with short T1 (fat or methaemoglobin) might be visualized.
The strength of the gradient determines the sensitivity
to flow. It is set by setting the aliasing or encoding velocity (VENC). Unfortunately, phase sensitization can only be acquired along one axis at a time. Therefore, phasecontrast angiographic techniques tend to be 4 times slower than TOF techniques with the same matrix.