Magnetic resonance microimaging of human skin vasculature in vivo at 3 Tesla.

MRI can be used to investigate human skin microvasculature in vivo, provided adequate spatial resolution. Therefore, the sensitivity of the experiment has to be optimized to achieve sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) within reasonable measurement time to minimize motion artifacts, improve patient comfort and save costs. In this work, the high sensitivity of a 15 mm surface coil and the signal strength of a 3 Tesla scanner, together with a three-dimensional gradient echo sequence and post-processing have been combined to obtain high SNR. Images of human skin with isotropic spatial resolution of 100 μm were acquired within 10 min and the cutaneous vasculature could be visualized in 3D [Correction made here after initial online publication.], based on three averaged scans. The presented method can be used for diagnosis and, due to its non-invasiveness, treatment monitoring of vascular pathologies in the skin, such as inflammation, vascular malformation, or neoangiogenesis in superficial tumors.