In-plane sampling requirements of MR reprojection angiography

MR angiograms constructed by reprojection of rapid, sequential, thin-section, flow-compensated acquisitions can produce good-quality images of vasculature. When many sections are required, an unrealistic acquisition time of several hours will be needed if the in-plane resolution is 128 x 256. The scan time can be reduced by using a smaller number (Np) of phase-encoding steps. If the reprojection direction is parallel to the phase-encoding direction, the resolution of the resulting angiogram is preserved. The amount of possible reduction of Np was investigated by acquiring data with varying resolution in the phase-encoding direction through reduction of the phase-encoding gradient. The signal of a typical vessel improved by more than a factor of five as the resolution was reduced, with little loss in the quality of the angiogram. This indicated that scan time for this technique could be reduced