Detecting Early Arterial Wall Changes in Premenopausal Women with Metabolic Syndrome by Using Black-Blood DCE-MRI

Huijun Chen¹, Pathmaja Paramsothy², Alice Dowdy², Arthi Thirumalai², Sarah Prager², Xihai Zhao¹, Xue-Qiao Zhao², Edward Gill², William Kerwin²

The metabolic syndrome (MetS), a manifestation of insulin resistance, is associated with independent increased risk of CVD. One of the early manifestations of MetS on the arterial wall is endothelial dysfunction, which may lead to altered contrast agent kinetics in DCE MRI. Because of the small size of the vessel wall early in the atherosclerosis, blood suppressed DCE protocols are required, precluding extraction of the AIF for kinetic modeling. In this study, we sought to test the ability of black-blood DCE-MRI plus reference region model to study contrast agent kinetics in MetS patients drawn from a population of premenopausal women.