Keywords:
Abdomen, Liver, Vascular, MR, MR-Angiography, Technology assessment, Imaging sequences, Technical aspects, Image verification, Cancer, Cirrhosis
Authors:
T. Yoshikawa1, N. Aoyama1, N. Kanata1, Y. Kyotani1, S. Satou2, T. Kanda1, H. Koyama1, M. Nishio1, Y. Ohno1; 1Kobe/JP, 2Otawara/JP
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2013/C-1793
Purpose
The assessment and classification of anatomy of hepatic artery (HA) is an essential step for both diagnosis and management of various diseases in the upper abdomen (1).
Currently,
contrast-enhanced CT angiography is used for this purpose.
Development of non-invasive imaging techniques for this purpose is an urgent problem because of recent recognition of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis and high rate of renal dysfunction coexisting with liver diseases.
In addition,
anatomical surveillance of HA is required for healthy candidates in living donor liver transplantation avoiding unnecessary irradiation.
On the other hand,
improvements of non-contrast MR angiographic techniques have been reported recently (2),
especially at 3T-MRI because of its high blood labeling capability.
One of these techniques is time-spacial labeling inversion pulse (Time-SLIP) (3).
However,
to date,
we have no report on application of this technique for hepatic arteriography at 3T units.
The purpose of this study was to develop and assess Time-SLIP hepatic MR arteriography for assessment and classification of anatomy of HA.