MRI Evaluation of a Stented Abdominal Aorta of a Rabbit

MRI is an attractive non-invasive angiographic modality not requiring nephrotoxic contrast agents and damaging exposure to radiation such as traditional angiography and multislice CT. It has previously been shown to provide consistently accurate non-invasive information from the stented regions of peripheral vessels even under stenotic conditions [1–3]. The aim of this study is to show that phase contrast magnetic resonance (PC-MR) can be used to provide accurate quantitative information of blood flow in smaller stented vessels such as the coronaries, using an in-vitro model and a rabbit aorta model. The ultimate goal of the project is to evaluate in-stent restenosis in stented coronary vessels, ultimately describing the degree of stenosis based on blood velocity indices such as translesional pressure gradient and peak systolic velocity ratio (PSVR).