Abstract
ObjectiveThe purpose of this work is to evaluate the repeatability of a compressed sensing (CS) accelerated multi-contrast carotid protocol at 3 T.Materials and methodsTwelve volunteers and eight patients with carotid disease were scanned on a 3 T MRI scanner using a CS accelerated 3-D black-blood multi-contrast protocol which comprises T1w, T2w and PDw without CS, and with a CS factor of 1.5 and 2.0. The volunteers were scanned twice, the lumen/wall area and wall thickness were measured for each scan. Eight patients were scanned once, the inter/intra-observer reproducibility of the measurements was calculated.ResultsIn the repeated volunteer scans, the interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for the wall area measurement using a CS factor of 1.5 in PDw, T1w and T2w were 0.95, 0.81, and 0.97, respectively. The ICC for lumen area measurement using a CS factor of 1.5 in PDw, T1w and T2w were 0.96, 0.92, and 0.96, respectively. In patients, the ICC for inter/intra-observer measurements of lumen/wall area, and wall thickness were all above 0.81 in all sequences.ConclusionThe results show a CS accelerated 3-D black-blood multi-contrast protocol is a robust and reproducible method for carotid imaging. Future protocol design could use CS to reduce the scanning time.
Highlights
High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a useful clinic method to assess carotid plaque vulnerability, due to its excellent soft tissue contrast [1, 2]
Though still not used in clinical routine, the blood suppressed multi-contrast carotid MRI protocol has been used in previous research studies for plaque classification [2], component segmentation [3, 4] and to determine the age of intraplaque hemorrhage [5]
The interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and CoV for lumen and wall area measured from the repeated volunteer scans using the three
Summary
High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a useful clinic method to assess carotid plaque vulnerability, due to its excellent soft tissue contrast [1, 2]. Though still not used in clinical routine, the blood suppressed multi-contrast carotid MRI protocol has been used in previous research studies for plaque classification [2], component segmentation [3, 4] and to determine the age of intraplaque hemorrhage [5]. Black-blood techniques have been used to suppress the blood signal in the lumen to improve vessel wall visualisation. This is usually achieved in 2-D imaging with the use of magnetisation preparation schemes such as double [6, 7], or quadruple inversion-recovery [8]. One of the disadvantages of 3-D protocols in previous carotid studies is the long acquisition time (approximately 20–45 min), which could lead to poor patient compliance
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