REVIEW ARTICLE Noninvasive Imaging of Treated Cerebral Aneurysms, Part I: MR Angiographic Follow-Up of Coiled Aneurysms

SUMMARY: MRA is emerging as an alternative to conventional catheter based angiography for the assessment of aneurysms after endovascular treatment. Short TE and contrast enhanced MRA techniques can be applied to optimize image quality. We review the available data regarding the application of MR for the assessment of cerebral aneurysms after endovascular therapy. MR angiography (MRA) and CT angiography (CTA) areroutinely used to diagnose cerebral aneurysms.1-4 In many instances, these same noninvasive data can be used to plan subsequent treatment. After treatment has been com-pleted, the application of these powerful noninvasive imaging techniques becomes much more challenging owing to the in-teraction of the various therapeutic devices (ie, aneurysm clips, embolic coils, and/or stents) with the proton relaxation signal intensity or photon flux inMR imaging and CT, respec-tively, in the region of the treated aneurysm. The standard of practice has been to use catheter-based angiography5,6 for the evaluation of treated aneurysms.However, recent studies hav