Erschienen in:
01.08.2005 | Technical Innovation
Non-gated fetal MRI of umbilical blood flow in an acardiac twin
verfasst von:
Nobuhiko Hata, Toru Wada, Kyoko Kashima, Yoshiyuki Okada, Nobuya Unno, Michihiro Kitagawa, Toshio Chiba
Erschienen in:
Pediatric Radiology
|
Ausgabe 8/2005
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Abstract
Currently, the standard method of diagnosis of twin reversed arterial perfusion (TRAP) sequence is ultrasound imaging. The use of MRI for flow visualization may be a useful adjunct to US imaging for assessing the presence of retrograde blood flow in the acardiac fetus and/or umbilical artery. The technical challenge in fetal MRI flow imaging, however, is that fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring required for flow imaging is currently unavailable in the MRI scanner. A non-gated MRI flow imaging technique that requires no ECG monitoring was developed using the t-test to detect blood flow in 20 slices of phase-contrast MRI images randomly scanned at the same location over multiple cardiac cycles. A feasibility study was performed in a 24-week acardiac twin that showed no umbilical flow sonographically. Non-gated MRI flow images clearly indicated the presence of blood flow in the umbilical artery to the acardiac twin; however, there was no blood flow beyond the abdomen. This study leads us to conjecture that non-gated MRI flow imaging is sensitive in detecting low-range blood flow velocity and can be an adjunct to Doppler US imaging.