Dual Imaging with Bright Blood Arterial Input Function & Black Blood Tissue Acquisition for Vessel Wall Imaging in Atherosclerosis: BB-SHILO (Black-Blood Simultaneous High-Low Temporal (Low-High Spatial) Resolution Imaging)

Philip M. Robson¹, Claudia Calcagno¹, Sarayu Ramachandran¹, Venkatesh Mani¹, Melanie Kotys-Traughber², Zahi A. Fayad¹

A new sequence interleaving bright-blood GRE full-image and dark-blood SE image-segment acquisitions is investigated for application to quantitative Dynamic Contrast Enhanced imaging of the carotid arteries in atherosclerosis. Bright-blood images are acquired with 1-sec temporal and low 0.5x4-mm spatial resolutions to capture the arterial input function, while the interleaved dark-blood images have lower temporal and 0.5x0.5-mm spatial resolution to image the thin vessel wall without blooming of the bright vessel lumen. This study in three subjects demonstrates the feasibility of simultaneously-acquired combined image contrasts. Contrast agent kinetic parameters measured in the vessel wall are consistent with those in the literature.