Abstract
As with all other magnetic resonance (MR) imaging modalities, magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) techniques benefit from rapid gradient systems, low-noise coil and receiver components, and from a clever implementation of imaging sequences and postprocessing software. This chapter gives a brief overview on several hardware components that may influence the quality of MRA images. The most important technical improvement within recent years was the development of high-power gradient systems. A three-dimensional (3D) data set can now be acquired within a few seconds and the contrast-enhanced MRA technique has thus become routinely available on conventional MR scanners. In addition, local receiver coils such as multi-array coils have significantly improved the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and an increased image resolution is now possible even for a large field-of-view.
