Turbulence-resistant MR angiography

Current MR angiographic techniques have difficulties in depicting some vascular features due to disordered flow patterns. The signal loss causing these difficulties is commonly attributed to intravoxel phase dispersion. In this paper, the authors test the hypothesis that signal loss is also due to view-to-view changes in the modulus and phase of magnetization in vascular volume elements. A two-dimensional Fourier transform, gradient-echo sequence was modified to apply a constant phase encoding in each repetition. signal from view-to-view variations in modulus or phase of magnetization of vascular volume elements is thus distinct from signal arising from static or constant motion elements and can be enhanced with application of a clipped adaptive histogram equalization filter. Angiographic projection images were created by integrating along pixels in each image, orthogonal to the readout axis