Jie Sun1, Daniel S. Hippe1,
Hunter R. Underhill2, Yan Song3, Nan Luo3,
Min Chen3, Cheng Zhou3, Thomas S. Hatsukami4,
Chun Yuan1
1Radiology, University of
Washington, Seattle, WA, United States; 2Medicine, University of
Washington, Seattle, WA, United States; 3Radiology, Beijing
Hospital, Beijing, China, People's Republic of; 4Surgery,
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
Inconsistent image quality across subjects and imaging centers remains one of the major technical problems for carotid vessel wall imaging. This study analyzed carotid MRI scans of 80 subjects collected from two imaging centers. One site was located in the U.S. and the other was in China. We have observed consistently better image quality from the latter site in our experience. The objective of our study was to identify patient characteristics associated with image quality. In addition, we further sought to uncover potential causes of image quality disparity between imaging sites.