Ye Qiao1, David A. Steinman2,
Qin Qin1, Maryam Etesami1, Michael Schr1,3,
Brad C. Astor1, Bruce A. Wasserman1
1The Johns Hopkins
Hospital, Baltimore, MD, United States; 2University of Toronto,
Toronto,, ON, Canada; 3Philips Healthcare, Cleveland, OH, United
States
Only a few studies have attempted to image intracranial atherosclerosis by MRI, all using a 2D black blood MRI technique. This approach is suboptimal for imaging intracranial vessel walls given the small size and inherent curving course of these vessels. We developed a 3D high-resolution Volumetric ISotropic TSE Acquisition (VISTA) sequence (0.5 isotropic) for evaluating intracranial vessels at 3.0T to minimize the partial volume effects and signal constraints of 2D sequences. Our sequence provides reliable measurements of intracranial vessel wall size and may make it possible to discern pathological changes from the normal vessel wall.