Assessment of Intracranial Curved and Distal Small Arteries by Using zTE-MRA: Comparison with TOF-MRA

Motivation: Time-of-flight MRA (TOF-MRA) is sensitive to abnormal blood flow and result in susceptibility artifact signal and signal loss in distal small artery. Goal(s): To investigate whether zero echo time MRA (zTE-MRA) could improve the image quality in intracranial artery with the same scan time. Approach: Recruiting healthy subjects and taking zTE-MRA and TOF-MRA scanning. Results: Compared with TOF-MRA using the same scan time, zTE-MRA could reduce susceptibility artifact signal in intracranial curved artery and suppress tissue signal intensity surrounding artery to better show ophthalmic artery. Impact: Providing a non-invasive method to better reduce susceptibility artifact signal in intracranial curved artery and suppress tissue signal intensity surrounding artery to better show distal small artery.