Detection of coronary artery stenoses using breath-hold magnetic resonance coronary angiography. Comparison with conventional x-ray angiography

Purpose: To detect coronary artery stenoses, we compare breath-hold mag- netic resonance coronary angiography (MR- CA) to conventional coronary angiography (CA). Materials and Methods: Sixty-five patients with suspected coronary artery disease under- went MRCA and CA within one week. MRCA ex- amination was performed by using the two-di- mensional (2D) breath-hold technique with a fast spoil gradient-echo sequence/spiral. Each imaging sequence was obtained within one breath-hold in expiration (14 seconds of ap- noea). The assessment of coronary artery stenoses on magnetic resonance (MR) an- giograms was independently performed by two blinded readers and compared to conventional CA images. Results: Three hundred and ninety segments were evaluated by the two imaging techniques. MRCA correctly detected 76 of 88 (86%) stenoses, and recognized 242 of 302 (80%) not affected segments. The Pearson correlation co- efficient between MRCA and CA in assessing coronary narrowings was very high: r = 0.85. Despite this the mean difference was 4.5 with a standard error of estimate of 0.21, indicating that MRCA slightly overestimates the degree of stenoses. Conclusions: Our study showed that 2D breath-hold MRCA is an accurate technique in displaying and quantifying the most significant stenoses in the proximal and middle segments of the coronary arteries.