Whole body TOF mouse magnetic resonance angiography

Introduction : Cardiovascular diseases, such as atherosclerosis, can induce the development of stenosis. These can become critical in pathologies such as coronary heart diseases and necessitate a surgical intervention. A whole body angiography is therefore required to localize stenosis at risk and to target interventions. First-pass magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) on humans provides a non-invasive visualization of blood flow with good contrast between vessels and tissues using Gadolinium contrast agent [1]. However first-pass MRA are hardly used on small animals [2]. Nowadays, time-offlight (TOF)-MRA is limited to small fields-of-view (FOV) because of its long acquisition times. The aim of this study was also to develop a fast TOF-MRA technique able to get the full angiogram of mouse body with good contrast within reasonable acquisition times. After implementation, this method has been applied to detect and study stenosis on pathologic mouse models.