Combined renal MRA and perfusion with a single dose of contrast.

Both anatomical and functional scans are often performed when diagnosing renovascular diseases, which in many cases require two separate contrast injections. With nephrogenic systemic fibrosis being associated with gadolinium, minimizing contrast injection dosage is desirable. In this study, a technique which performs time-resolved renal magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) and perfusion with a single scan and single dose of contrast has been evaluated in six healthy volunteers. A previously developed three-dimensional MRA technique called Contrast-enhanced Angiography with Multi-Echo and Radial k-space (CAMERA) has been used to acquire images, and perfusion analysis was performed using deconvolution methods. Time-resolved MRA, as well as renal blood flow, renal volume of distribution and mean transit time maps, were acquired.