Zhaoyang Fan1, 2, Jingsi Xie1, 3, Xiaoming Bi4, James Carr3, Troy Labounty1, James Min1, Daniel Berman1, Debiao Li1, 2
1Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States; 2University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States; 3Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States; 4Siemens Cardiovascular R&D, Chicago, IL, United States
Inflammation plays a critical role in various stages of the atherosclerotic plaque development. Dynamic contrast-enhanced vessel wall imaging has been used to link the enhancement pattern to the extent of inflammation of carotid plaque. However, the previous work used a bright blood technique, making it difficult to clearly draw the contour of the vessel wall. In this work, we developed a T1-insensitve 2D black blood imaging technique, SRDIR-prepared gradient-echo, to acquire time-resolved contrast-enhanced vessel wall images which is interleaved by a bright-blood acquisition. Separate signal measurements of blood and vessel wall allowed accurate determination of Ktrans and fractional plasma volume.