SLIP, a lipid suppression technique to improve image contrast in inflow angiography

In rapidly acquired gradient echo images, lipid regions usually appear as areas of high signal intensity. In 2D inflow angiograms processed by the maximum intensity projection algorithm, this high lipid signal may prevent angiographic visualization of some blood vessels. We present a new approach to suppress the lipid signal, SLIP, spatially separated lipid presaturation. The SLIP technique suppresses lipid signal over a narrow region by exploiting the chemical-shift effect. SLIP requires an arrangement of a thin slice and a wide presaturation slab already available in 2D inflow refreshment angiography. Thus SLIP was incorporated to an inflow angiography sequence without increasing the acquisition time. The use of SLIP resulted in considerable improvement in angiographic contrast and increased the number of vessels detected in projection angiograms. The SLIP technique does not require high homogeneity of the main magnet field.