Reproducibility of black-blood coronary vessel wall MR imaging.

PURPOSE New magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods can provide high spatial resolution images of the coronary artery wall, and statistically significant differences in coronary vessel wall thickness between atherosclerotic disease patients and control subjects have been shown. The aim of this study is to assess inter-study reproducibility (i.e., repeatability) of the cross-sectional 2D coronary vessel wall MRI using a black-blood technique. METHODS AND RESULTS Twelve healthy adult subjects were studied with the use of a commercial 1.5 T CMR system. A double inversion recovery fast spin-echo (FSE) sequence (black blood) was used. Each subject was scanned twice on different days. The mean RCA lumen area difference between study 1 and study 2 was 0.004 mm2, and the coefficient of repeatability (COR) was +/- 0.06 mm2. The mean RCA wall thickness difference between study 1 and study 2 was 0.02 mm, and the COR was +/-0.39 mm. CONCLUSION Cross-sectional coronary vessel wall imaging with 2D double-IR FSE is highly reproducible for serial evaluation of coronary vessel walls and atherosclerotic coronary artery disease.