A method for MR quantification of flow velocities in blood and CSF using interleaved gradient-echo pulse sequences

The aim of this study was to establish a rapid method for in vivo quantification of a large range of flow velocities using phase information. A basic gradient-echo sequence was constructed, in which flow was encoded along the slice selection direction by variation of the amplitude of a bipolar gradient without changes in sequence timings. The influence of field inhomogeneities and eddy currents was studied in a 1.5 T scanner. From the basic sequence, interleaved sequences for calibration and in vivo flow determination were constructed, and flow information was obtained by pairwise subtraction of velocity-encoded from velocity non-encoded phase images. Calibration was performed in a nongated mode using flow phantoms, and the results were compared with theoretically calculated encoding efficiencies. In vivo flow was studied in healthy volunteers in three different areas using cardiac gating; central blood flow in the great thoracic vessels, peripheral blood flow in the popliteal vessels, and flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the cerebral aqueduct. The results show good agreement with results obtained with other techniques. The proposed method for flow determination was shown to be rapid and flexible, and we thus conclude that it seems well suited for routine clinical MR examinations.