When performing a contrast enhanced MRA, what must you communicate to the technologists?
The plane of section in which you want to reconstruct 2D images from the acquired 3D MRA images. The technologists may call this “the plane of injection.” Put simply, this is the plane that allows for full coverage of the artery of interest while using the thinnest depth of the 3D volume of image acquisition to minimize acquisition time. For the renal arteries, it is either the coronal or axial plane, but not the sagittal plane. For the celiac arterial tree, it is the axial plane. For the superior mesenteric artery (SMA), it is the sagittal plane. For the lower extremity arteries, it is the coronal plane.
