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Assessment of Cerebral Blood Flow Pulsatility and Cerebral Arterial Compliance With 4D Flow MRI
Author(s) -
Holmgren Madelene,
Wåhlin Anders,
Dunås Tora,
Malm Jan,
Eklund Anders
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of magnetic resonance imaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.563
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1522-2586
pISSN - 1053-1807
DOI - 10.1002/jmri.26978
Subject(s) - medicine , pulsatile flow , cerebral blood flow , cerebral arteries , magnetic resonance imaging , blood flow , hemodynamics , anterior cerebral artery , cardiology , middle cerebral artery , nuclear medicine , radiology , ischemia
Background Four‐dimensional flow magnetic resonance imaging (4D flow MRI) enables efficient investigation of cerebral blood flow pulsatility in the cerebral arteries. This is important for exploring hemodynamic mechanisms behind vascular diseases associated with arterial pulsations. Purpose To investigate the feasibility of pulsatility assessments with 4D flow MRI, its agreement with reference two‐dimensional phase‐contrast MRI (2D PC‐MRI) measurements, and to demonstrate how 4D flow MRI can be used to assess cerebral arterial compliance and cerebrovascular resistance in major cerebral arteries. Study Type Prospective. Subjects Thirty‐five subjects (20 women, 79 ± 5 years, range 70–91 years). Field Strength/Sequence 4D flow MRI (PC‐VIPR) and 2D PC‐MRI acquired with a 3T scanner. Assessment Time‐resolved flow was assessed in nine cerebral arteries. From the pulsatile flow waveform in each artery, amplitude (ΔQ), volume load (ΔV), and pulsatility index (PI) were calculated. To reduce high‐frequency noise in the 4D flow MRI data, the flow waveforms were low‐pass filtered. From the total cerebral blood flow, total PI (PI tot ), total volume load (ΔV tot ), cerebral arterial compliance (C), and cerebrovascular resistance (R) were calculated. Statistical Tests Two‐tailed paired t ‐test, intraclass correlation (ICC). Results There was no difference in ΔQ between 4D flow MRI and the reference (0.00 ± 0.022 ml/s, mean ± SEM, P = 0.97, ICC = 0.95, n = 310) with a cutoff frequency of 1.9 Hz and 15 cut plane long arterial segments. For ΔV, the difference was –0.006 ± 0.003 ml (mean ± SEM, P = 0.07, ICC = 0.93, n = 310) without filtering. Total R was 11.4 ± 2.41 mmHg/(ml/s) (mean ± SD) and C was 0.021 ± 0.009 ml/mmHg (mean ± SD). ΔV tot was 1.21 ± 0.29 ml (mean ± SD) with an ICC of 0.82 compared with the reference. PI tot was 1.08 ± 0.21 (mean ± SD). Data Conclusion We successfully assessed 4D flow MRI cerebral arterial pulsatility, cerebral arterial compliance, and cerebrovascular resistance. Averaging of multiple cut planes and low‐pass filtering was necessary to assess accurate peak‐to‐peak features in the flow rate waveforms. Level of Evidence: 2 Technical Efficacy Stage: 2 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2020;51:1516–1525.