Figure 2
Stainless steel coil artifact. 17-year-old patient with dextrocardia, double-outlet right ventricle, and pulmonary stenosis who has undergone a Rastelli operation and catheter implantation of a single stainless steel vascular coil to occlude a small left superior vena cava draining to the left atrium. ECG-gated steady-state free precession sequence in a coronal plane (A) and axial plane (B) demonstrating a region of signal loss in the upper left chest (arrow) resulting from the coil. The area of signal loss is several times larger than the coil and obscures a portion of the left pulmonary artery. (C) shows an ECG-triggered fast spin echo sequence with a double inversion preparation pulse acquired in diastole with a similar orientation as in (B) With this sequence, the extent of signal loss artifact is reduced, and the left pulmonary artery is more clearly visualized.