Alexander Peter Lin1,2, Scott Fraser1, Han Wen2
1Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA; 2National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) MRI provides quantitative strain measurements of the biomechanical function of vessel wall motion. The goal of the study is to compare the previously validated segmented sequence with the single shot implementation. Results show that the single shot sequence with rigid body image registration removes in-plane flow artifacts, particularly above the bifurcation, and motion artifacts due to swallowing and neck motion which increases the reproducibility and accuracy of strain measurements in the carotid arteries. This allows for optimal in vivo characterization of atherosclerotic plaque in future studies.