Pathological abnormalities of the pulmonary vein are relatively rare and difficult to diagnose because of restricted echo window or dilution of contrast agent during conventional angiography.1 2 It is usual to distinguish between pulmonary venous stenosis and anomalous pulmonary venous connection of one or more pulmonary veins, which may be associated with other cardiac malformations. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging offers different advantages because of the wide field of view and multi planar imaging. We report on the use of contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography in patients with anomalies of the pulmonary veins.

Between June 1999 and October 2000, six consecutive patients in whom anomalies of pulmonary vein were suspected and/or additional imaging data were required, underwent contrast enhanced MR angiography of the heart. Patient 1 was 8 years old, patient 2 was 13 years old, patient 3 was a neonate, patient 4 was 2 months old, patient 5 was 30 months old, and patient 6 was 10 years old. Before MR angiography, five of them had undergone two dimensional echocardiography, and three had undergone cardiac catheterisation.

All MR examinations were performed after informed consent on 1.5 Tesla imaging system (Vision, Siemens, Erlanghen, Germany) without ECG triggering and breath-holding. The sequence parameters were: time of repetition 3.5 ms; time of echo …