Cardiovascular MR imaging has become a valuable diagnostic modality. The need for speed and efficiency when imaging cardiovascular structures has helped to drive the development of rapid imaging techniques and advanced MR hardware.
The growing availability of high-field MRI systems is now prompting interest in 3T cardiovascular MRI. The move from 1.5T to 3T means a doubling in signal-to-noise ratio. Subsequent gains in contrast-to-noise ratio, imaging speed, and efficiency can be translated into added diagnostic value.
Many of the high-field cardiovascular MRI applications earn the moniker of “advanced techniques.” High-field cardiovascular MRI has been regarded as one of the most challenging MR applications owing to practical obstacles associated with magnetic field inhomogeneities, radiofrequency nonuniformities across the heart, and RF power deposition constraints.
CVMR is an area in which 3T imaging boasts a number of advantages over 1.5T. Gains in spatial and temporal resolution can be invested in streamlining structural and functional cardiovascular imaging and can also be used to facilitate targeted tissue characterization and improve access to physiological information.
ADDED VALUE
First-pass contrast-enhanced MR angiography is a particularly appealing candidate for high-field CVMR. Contrast between blood vessels and background tissue on 3T images is superior to that on images acquired at 1.5T.
High-field imaging may also open up new clinical territory. The extension of MRA to include submillimeter spatial resolution imaging of tiny peripheral vessels (Figure 1), for example, may allow MRI to replace digital subtraction angiography for vessel flow and assessment prior to bypass surgery.1 This approach has been impossible at 1.5T.
