Image Processing of Routine Spin-Echo MR Images to Enhance Vascular Structures: Comparison with MR Angiography

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a highly flexible diagnostic imaging technique providing complex information about the morphology of various normal and abnormal tissues. Besides this clinically valuable anatomic and pathologic information, there are some unique functional features which can be extracted from MR images. The influence of macroscopic and microscopic motion on MR images as revealed by more or less specialized pulse sequences may demonstrate the presence of physiologically important processes such as blood or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow, tissue perfusion and diffusion [Axel84, Demoulin87, Demoulin89, Haacke89, Wehrli87]. Recent progress in the implementation of these MRI methods shows that while these applications have not yet been fully exploited, their use in clinical practice is not far in the future.