High-Resolution MR Angiography at 7 T : Detection of Perforating Arteries of the Anterior Communicating and Distal Middle Cerebral Arteries

PURPOSE: Three-dimensional (3D) time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) is a widely used non-invasive method for visualizing intracranial, including major perforating, arteries. However, some minute but clinically-important perforating arteries arising from the anterior communicating artery (ACoA) and distal middle cerebral artery (MCA), i.e., the hypothalamic branch (HTB) of the subcallosal artery (SCA) and the long insular artery (LIA), respectively, are hardly visible on conventional MRA even at 3 Tesla (T). Hence, we investigated whether these arteries can be detected using high-resolution MRA at 7T with/without a magnetization transfer contrast (MTC) technique.