Effect of blood flow on double inversion recovery vessel wall MRI of the peripheral arteries: Quantitation with T₂ mapping and comparison with flow-insensitive T₂-prepared inversion recovery imaging

Blood suppression in the lower extremities using flow-reliant methods such as double inversion recovery may be problematic due to slow blood flow. T ₂ mapping using fast spin echo (FSE) acquisition was utilized to quantitate the effectiveness of double inversion recovery blood suppression in 13 subjects and showed that 25 ± 12% of perceived vessel wall pixels in the popliteal arteries contained artifactual blood signal. To overcome this problem, a flow-insensitive T₂-prepared inversion recovery sequence was implemented and optimal timing parameters were calculated for FSE acquisition. Black blood vessel wall imaging of the popliteal and femoral arteries was performed using two-dimensional T₂-prepared inversion recovery-FSE in the same 13 subjects. Comparison with twodimensional double inversion recovery-FSE showed that T₂-prepared inversion recovery-FSE reduced wall-mimicking blood artifacts that inflated double inversion recovery-FSE vessel wall area measurements in the popliteal artery.