Li Dong1, Hao Shen2, Xiaojie
Zhang1, Wei Yu1, Zhaoqi Zhang1, Hua Guo3,
Ren Wang1, Dongxu Lu1, Chun Yuan3,4
1Capital Medical
University, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Beijing, China, People's Republic of; 2GE
Healthcare; 3School of Medicine, Tsinghua University; 4University
of Washington
We hypothesized that 3D black blood, a single sequence, can quantify carotid stenosis and plaque composition simultaneously. Bilateral carotid arteries from 9 symptomatic subjects underwent 3D SPGR and MRA scans. There was an excellent correlation of measuring stenosis between 3D SPGR and MRA (r = 0.95, p < 0.001). For those arteries with corresponding histology (n = 5), good agreements in identifying major plaque components were found. Therefore, 3D black blood images allow interactive reconstruction in arbitrary planes providing a more thorough visualization of luminal severity and plaque components.