Whole-heart coronary MRA using a 32 channel coil array in combination with 2D-SENSE

M. Buehrer, C. Baltes, S. Kozerke, P. Boesiger Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland Introduction Recently, a “whole-heart” imaging protocol for coronary MRA, which covers the entire heart with a large non-angulated 3D measurement volume, has been proposed [1]. In this protocol, scan time is reduced using sensitivity encoding (SENSE) [2] along one phase-encoding direction. The objective of the present work was to investigate “whole-heart” coronary imaging using 2D-SENSE [3] and a 32 channel coil array [4]. Local noise amplification in the volume of interest was assessed by means of the g-factor metric for different reduction factors. Exemplary in-vivo data of the coronary arteries measured in a healthy volunteer are demonstrated.