Numerical Simulations of Carotid MRI: How Accurately Can We Quantify Atherosclerotic Plaque Components in vivo?

Harm Nieuwstadt¹, Tom Geraedts², Martine Truijman³, Eline Kooi³, Aad van der Lugt¹, Ton van der Steen¹, Jolanda Wentzel¹, Marcel Breeuwer², Frank Gijsen¹

Numerical simulations of carotid MRI were performed to assess the accuracy in segmentation of plaque components. We simulated an in vivo T1W contrast-enhanced carotid MRI protocol and evaluated it by comparison with clinical patient images. Plaque geometries derived from histological data were used as input for the MRI simulations. We found that manual segmentation of the luminal area, vessel wall area and LRNC area showed excellent correlation and inter observer agreement. FCs smaller than 0.6 were severely overestimated in thickness and quantified inaccurately, while the thickness of FCs larger than 0.6 mm was assessed reliably.