Abstract #0668

4D Flow MRI in Aortic Valve Disease Demonstrates Altered Distribution of Aortic Blood Flow Helicity

Ramona Lorenz¹, Jelena Bock¹, Alexander Jonathan Barker¹, Florian von Knobelsdorff-Brenkenhoff², Jan Gerrit Korvink³,⁴, Michael Markl⁵

¹Dept. of Radiology, Medical Physics, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany; ²Dept. of Cardiology and Nephrology, Charit Medical University Berlin, Working group on cardiovascular MRI, and HELIOS Klinikum Berlin-B, Berlin, Germany; ³Dept. of Microsystems Engineering - IMTEK, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany; ⁴Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany; ⁵Dept. of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Chicago, United States

This study provides a quantitative analysis of blood flow helicity within the aorta using 4D flow sensitive MRI. Helical flow was evaluated in a study with 12 healthy volunteers and 20 patients with aortic valve disease. Time resolved mean helicity along the entire aorta was quantified for each subject with good test-retest reliability. All healthy subjects show a consistent direction of rotation over the entire aorta with increased helicity in the aortic arch and good inter-individual agreement, while patients reveal strong variations in the distribution and a significant increase of helical flow in the aorta.