Yet the fat adjacent to the coil, even using fat suppression, is difficult to eliminate. Subtraction imaging is possible as long as there is a filter and no misregistration. However, often these scans will be difficult to window. However, the back of the thoracic aorta is tough to window in the same way. In addition, the field of view is limited to 35 cm, and so it can be difficult to evaluate the entire thoracic aorta for dissection, for example.
Dissection requires full aortic evaluation.
The final problem is the reconstruction time. Assume a clinician wants to perform a multiacquisition study. That clinician may as well turn off the machine and wait for 15 minutes while it recalculates. Figure 12 Figure 12 shows a scan using a body coil with 30cc of gadolinium and a timing bolus. The large field of view enables evaluation of the entire aorta, though in this case the clinician opted to evaluate the descending thoracic aorta up to the top of the neck.