Image rendering and processing of magnetic resonance angiography

New imaging sequences with increasing spatial and temporal resolution are introduced frequently in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to perform noninvasive angiography both with and without contrast media for the enhancement of the vessels. These new sequences produce a growing amount of data to be evaluated by the radiologist to form the diagnosis. Because of the growing amount of data and thus the growing amount of slices, more and more images are reconstructed and either printed on film or viewed on a diagnostic workstation. When a diagnostic work-station is used the radiologist most frequently uses the stack or cine mode view of the slices, but other techniques like Multi Planar Reformatting (MPR), Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP), Surface Rendering (SR), and Volume Rendering (VR) are also available to process the data. When using these techniques, the radiologist needs to interact closely with the data to obtain optimal views and in some cases special purpose workstations are required to be able to use them. In this article an overview of available techniques is presented. The technique itself, its advantages and disadvantages, and the (possible) clinical applications are discussed.