MR angiography of abdominal ischemia.

Advances during the past decade in MRI have made this modality increasingly suitable for evaluating abdominal vascular diseases. Preliminary results in canine models and humans suggest that MRI has the potential of becoming a definitive, noninvasive test for the diagnosis of both acute and chronic mesenteric ischemia. MRI can provide both morphological information about the patency or degree of stenosis in mesenteric vessels as well as quantitative functional information such as blood flow and blood oxygen saturation in these vessels. The MR techniques developed for studying the mesenteric circulation also can be used for improving the diagnosis and posttreatment evaluation of vascular diseases in other abdominal organ systems.