The advantages of MRI for vascular diagnosis are well known. They include safety, noninvasive nature (except for giving intravenous contrast), a wide field-of-view unimpaired by acoustic shadowing or beam-hardening artifact, multiplanar imaging, and an ability to show complicated 3D relationships. The latter is not possible with conventional angiography and is difficult to do with echocardiography. MRI has a significant advantage when compared with CT in that it does not require large volumes of iodinated contrast (a benefit also compared with angiography). Cine MRA can provide all of the functional information provided by echocardiography.
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Section Description
Editor: Jeffrey S. Klein
Associate Editors: Ann Leung, MD
David Lynch, MD, Jung-Gi Im, MD
Michio Kono, MD, Charles White, MD
Guest Editor: William Stanford, M.D.