Since the early 1960s, selective x-ray coronary angiography has provided the only means of visualizing the coronary arterial system in vivo. However, it has several disadvantages. First, the incidence, albeit relatively low, of so-called major adverse events (death, myocardial infarction, or stroke) during or within 24 hours of selective coronary angiography is reported to be 0.2% to 0.3%, and ...

BACKGROUND In patients with complex pulmonary stenosis or atresia, a detailed delineation of all sources of pulmonary blood supply is necessary for planning surgical and transcatheter procedures and usually requires diagnostic cardiac catheterization. The goals of this study were to determine whether gadolinium-enhanced 3D magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) can provide a noninvasive alternati...

Background: Circulus Arteriosus cerebrii, another name for Circle of Willis, establishes a polygonal anastomotic channel between two internal carotid arteries and vertebral arteries. The arterial circle is located in the interpeduncular fossa, near base brain. It has been established through anatomical radiological studies that there are variations healthy persons. Aim: To evaluate Willis suppl...

Background Turner syndrome is associated with bicuspid aortic valve (BAV), coarctation of the aorta, aortic dilation, and aortic dissection. Vertebral artery tortuosity, as demonstrated by magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), is increased in other disorders associated with thoracic aortic dilation and dissection, including Marfan syndrome and Loeys-Dietz syndrome, and increased tortuosity is a...

In this note, we segment and topologically classify brain vessel data obtained from magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). The segmentation is done adaptively and the classification by means of cubical homology, i.e. the computation of homology groups. In this way the number of connected components (measured by H0), the tunnels (given by H1) and the voids (given by H2) are determined, resulting ...

We describe the case of a 72-year-old man who presented with dementia that had progressed rapidly over a few months. Laboratory analysis of blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) showed no abnormalities, with the exception of a slightly increased CSF protein level. Results of routine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) including diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA...

We have recently encountered a rare case of fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) of the vertebral artery (VA) presenting as lateral medullary syndrome. A 39-year-old male was admitted to our hospital due to vertigo, dysarthria and numbness of the left face and the right limbs. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) of brain revealed lateral medullary infarction in ...

Unilateral absence of a pulmonary artery (UAPA) is a rare pulmonary vascular anomaly that is usually associated with other cardiac anomalies. We report a 9-year-old female diagnosed with isolated unilateral absence of the left pulmonary artery and a right aortic arch but without other cardiac anomalies. The only symptoms the patient had were recurrent respiratory tract infections. The chest x-r...

Introduction: Ghost magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) has been proposed as an unenhanced and ungated method for angiography that is based on the presence of ghost artifacts resulting from pulsatile blood flow (1). Although the method is simple to acquire in that cardiac gating is not required, it requires manual post-processing to identify suitable slices in a large stack from which to creat...

Figure 2: MIPs of 1.5T (a) and 7T (b) PC MRA of the vasculature superior to the circle of Willis of a 39 year old, male volunteer. The acquisitions times for both sequences were about 5 minutes. Axial images were acquired with slices thickness of 0.75 mm. The 7T images depict third order branches of the circle of Willis, e.g. the paracentral artery. Ultrahigh Field (>7T) Time-of-Flight and Phas...