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Joint blood and cerebrospinal fluid suppression for intracranial vessel wall MRI
Author(s) -
Wang Jinnan,
Helle Michael,
Zhou Zechen,
Börnert Peter,
Hatsukami Thomas S,
Yuan Chun
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.25667
Subject(s) - cerebrospinal fluid , medicine , lumen (anatomy) , magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear medicine , radiology , pathology , surgery
Purpose To develop and evaluate a joint blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) suppression technique for improved intracranial vessel wall MR imaging. Methods The Delay Alternating with Nutation for Tailored Excitation (DANTE) prepulse was specifically optimized for CSF suppression to improve vessel wall and CSF contrast. It was evaluated on six patients and three healthy volunteers. CSF suppression efficiency, lumen signal to noise ratio, and wall‐lumen contrast to noise ratio were compared between images with and without DANTE in major intercranial artery segments. Contrast changes in tissues were also compared with evaluate the technique's compatibility with multicontrast imaging techniques. Results The optimized DANTE images significantly improved intracranial vessel wall characterization on all images. Quantitatively, CSF to wall contrast improved by 28% (DANTE‐VISTA 1.354 ± 0.216 versus VISTA 1.057 ± 0.13; P < 0.001). DANTE also significantly improved wall‐lumen (10.55 ± 3.79 versus 9.34 ± 3.54; P < 0.001) and wall‐CSF (4.62 ± 3.19 versus 0.78 ± 2.30; P < 0.001) contrast‐to‐noise ratios. DANTE prepared images were also found to make only minimal impact on static tissue contrast. Conclusion DANTE prepared MR imaging can significantly improve contrast between the vessel wall and cerebral spinal fluid in major intracranial arteries, holding a good potential to be combined with multicontrast protocol for intracranial wall imaging. Magn Reson Med 75:831–838, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.