Single-breath-hold venous or arterial flow-suppressed pulmonary vascular MR imaging with phased-array coils

A method for acquiring pulmonary vascular magnetic resonance (MR) images with either venous or arterial flow suppression is described. The proposed method only marginally increases the overall imaging time compared with conventional flow-suppression techniques. This enables an acquisition to be completed within a single breath hold with some selectivity as to flow direction. Instead of applying a spatially selective presaturation pulse before each radio-frequency (RF) excitation pulse, the flow presaturation pulse is applied once every 16-20 RF excitation pulses. To avoid image artifacts and to maintain a steady state, each presaturation pulse interval is followed by a normal imaging segment but with data acquisition turned off. Overall imaging time is increased by two TR intervals for each presaturation segment. For a 256 x 128 matrix acquisition, venous flow presaturation increases overall imaging time by approximately 14 TR intervals, while arterial flow suppression increases imaging time by 10 TR intervals.