Visualization of coronary small branch at ultra-high field 5T Noncontrast Dixon Whole-Heart Coronary MR Angiography: compared with 3T MRI.
BACKGROUND Detection of the small coronary branches using 5T Dixon (5TDixon) sequence, analysis of visualization and performance comparison with 3T Dixon (3TDixon) sequence. MATERIALS AND METHODS A prospective study was conducted involving 22 healthy adult volunteers (mean age, 25 years ± 3 [SD]; twelve male participants) who underwent navigator-gated three-dimensional MR angiography at both 5TDixon and 3TDixon. The visualization rates, image quality scores and visualized lengths of the small coronary branches were quantitatively compared between 5TDixon and 3TDixon sequences. RESULTS The 5TDixon sequence demonstrated superior performance to the 3TDixon sequence, yielding a significantly shorter scan time (10.01 ± 3.17 min vs. 13.71 ± 3.36 min, P = 0.002), a significantly higher SNRRCA-pro (76.08 ± 13.68 vs. 29.08 ± 6.63, P < 0.001) and a significantly higher CNRRCA-pro (72.25 ± 14.48 vs. 24.72 ± 5.72, P < 0.001).The visualization rates of the right anterior ventricular branch, acute marginal branch, and atrioventricular nodal artery were significant higher at 5TDixon compared with 3TDixon, whereas no statistically significant differences were observed for the conus branch, sinoatrial nodal artery and the anterior septal artery. Score of image quality of small coronary branches was higher for 5TDixon compared with 3TDixon (all P < 0.05). Among paired visible branches, 5TDixon generally demonstrated longer visualized vessel segments than 3TDixon, while length result for atrioventricular nodal artery was reported descriptively because of very small paired sample sizes. CONCLUSION 5T Non-contrast Dixon Whole-Heart Coronary MR Angiography provides an effective tool for visualizing small coronary branches and demonstrates superior performance compared with 3T.