Congress News: 18th Annual International Conference on Magnetic Resonance Angiography
From September 13 to 15, the 18th Annual International Conference on Magnetic Resonance Angiography took place in Basel, Switzerland The MRA Club is the premier forum for researchers in the field of vascular MR imaging and features presentations and posters on new MRA acquisition techniques, quantification and postprocessing, vessel wall and plaques, interventional MRA, flow and perfusion, contrast agents and cardiac and coronary as well as body, carotid, and peripheral MRA. The annual meeting has witnessed the introduction of many seminal contributions of leaders in the field and this year was no exception. The local organizers, Prof. Georg Bongartz, Prof. Klaus Scheffler and Dr. Deniz Bilecen, put together an exciting scientific and social program.
Participants at this years meeting were privy to the latest research with Vasovist, which was the main subject of no less than nine presentations on thoracic, abdominal and peripheral MRA by leaders in the field. In addition to investigating the utility of the agent for imaging the diverse vascular beds in the body there also was a presentation on how to optimise parameters (see the presentation by Dr. Maisie Wang). Given the recent introduction of Vasovist experience was still preliminary. The conclusion nevertheless was that bloodpool agents show significant additional value: due to their increased relaxivity combined with their longer intravascular residence time, they enable for high resolution and robust MRA as well as reliable MR venography.
To see abstracts of the presentations given at this year’s MRA club please click the links below. (Copyrights with kind permission of the International MR Angio Club.)
Next year’s MRA club will take place in Istanbul, Turkey from October 3-5, 2007.
K. Nassenstein et al -- Breathhold magnetic resonance coronary angiography with Vasovist: initial experiences in volunteers
Contrast-enhanced MRCA using Vasovist allows visualization of the coronary arteries with high SNR and CNR for at least 30 minutes after injection. IR-SSFP sequences seem to be better suited for contrast-enhanced breathhold MRCA than IR-FLASH sequences.
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T. Leiner et al -- Initial results with clinical blood pool enhanced MRA: added value beyond first pass?
Gadofosveset-enhanced MR angiography enables better first pass image quality and significantly improves diagnostic yield and confidence by adding equilibrium-phase information of ultra-high spatial resolution.
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S.O. Schoenberg et al -- Intravascular contrast agents: initial clinical experience with a combined time-resolved and high-spatial resolution
MRA for body imaging
The use of gadofosveset in combination with multi-channel MRI systems enables a comprehensive assessment of vessels with high temporal and spatial resolution with one contrast injection.
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W. Willinek et al -- 4D time-resolved MR angiography with Keyhole (4D-TRAK): 60-times-accelerated MR angiography using CENTRA, Keyhole and SENSE at 3.0T
4D-TRAK is a new method of 4D time-resolved MRA with CENTRA Keyhole. In combination with SENSE, half-Fourier imaging using a Keyhole technique was implemented on a clinical whole-body 3.0 T system. Apart from cerebral AVM, clinical applications included lower-leg MRA, supraaortic MRA and MRA of hemodialysis shunts.
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J. Lotz et al -- Venous imaging of the thorax and abdomen using the blood
pool contrast agent gadofosveset
Venous imaging using gadofosveset is reliable and of constant high quality. Especially in highly pathologic venous alterations the reliability of venous contrast was the single most important aspect for diagnosis and planning of surgical or interventional procedures.
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M. Wang et al -- CNR optimization of high-resolution peripheral MRA using
sensitivity encoding for the Vasovist bood pool agent
The use of parallel acquisition for enhancing CNR was demonstrated for ultra-high resolution EP imaging. With Vasovist, diseased arteries were well depicted and vessel-wall enhancement could be seen at the site of atherosclerotic disease. In the calf, sufficient resolution and contrast allows distinction between small-caliber arteries and adjacent larger veins.
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J. Maki et al -- Preliminary experience with the blood pool agent gadofosveset for dynamic moving-table peripheral MRA – comparison with conventional agents
Moving-table pMRA with Vasovist can easily equal that performed with standard Gd agents; it also allows for the option of equilibrium-phase imaging. A higher dose (0.05 mmol/kg) is more effective than the approved dose (0.03 mmol/kg). More sophisticated infusion strategies may further improve Vasovist pMRA.
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J. F. M. Meaney -- Vasovist-enhanced moving-table peripheral MRA during first arterial passage of contrast agent
Apart from obvious advantages for imaging at high resolution in the steady state, Vasovist also offers advantages for imaging in first arterial pass for moving-table CE-MRA.
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