Highly accelerated first-pass contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography of the peripheral vasculature: comparison of gadofosveset trisodium with gadopentetate dimeglumine contrast agents.

PURPOSE: To investigate the blood pool agent gadofosveset trisodium for first-pass, dynamic peripheral contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (pMRA), and compare the results with a conventional gadolinium contrast agent.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 16 patients were imaged at 1.5T using a prototype peripheral vascular coil with high SENSE acceleration. Five received gadopentetate dimeglumine ( approximately 0.25 mmol/kg), and 11 received gadofosveset trisodium (five standard-dose 0.03 mmol/kg, six high-dose 0.05 mmol/kg). Quantitative contrast-enhancement and qualitative image quality evaluation was compared between agents and doses.
RESULTS: High-quality diagnostic images were uniformly obtained. The contrast ratio did not significantly differ between gadopentetate dimeglumine and high-dose gadofosveset trisodium, both of which were greater than standard-dose gadofosveset trisodium. High-dose gadofosveset trisodium was equivalent to gadopentetate dimeglumine in image quality and subjective vessel-to-background ratio, but significantly better for depicting small muscular arteries. Standard-dose gadofosveset trisodium showed equivalent image quality and small artery depiction with a slight but significant decrease in vessel-to-background ratio as compared to gadopentatate dimeglumine. Both gadofosveset trisodium doses trended toward more venous enhancement, but this was not a diagnostic problem.
CONCLUSION: First-pass peripheral CE-MRA using gadofosveset trisodium is feasible, yielding image quality comparable to double to triple-dose gadopentetate dimeglumine. Increasing the gadofosveset trisodium dose to 0.05 mmol/kg yields further improvements.