Theoretical baseline of possibility to diagnose renal artery pathologies using contrast enhanced MRA (CeMRA) are presented in this paper, especially the influence of limited spatial resolution, signal-to-noise ratio and the measurement duration are discussed. The authors compare two basic methods of CeMRA, namely the singleMRAmeasurement with bolus delay determination (test bolus method) against dynamic time-resolved MRA with short successive measurements. Results are shown in a group of 41 patients with suspected renal artery disease. The dynamicCeMRAgives more stable and robust results and also in the average higher quality score of the MRA images despite its limitation in the spatial resolution and the limitation to depict all subtle arteries with possible tiny pathology. On the contrary, this method profits from the post-processing as subtraction and time interpolation allowing to further suppress the static tissue and to increase significantly vessel contrast in the image.

        Key words: angiography – renal arteries – stenosis