S. Beladi1, 2, C. R. McCreary1, 2, E. E. Smith1, 3, M. L. Lauzon1, 2, M. E. MacDonald1, R. Frayne1, 2
1Seaman Family MR Centre, Foothills Medical Centre, Alberta Health services, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; 2Department of Radiology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; 3Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
This study evaluates the diagnostic values of susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) and quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) for cerebral microbleed (CMB) detection in CAA patients. The QSM technique was implemented using L1-norm nonlinear regularization to accurately estimate the iron (hemosiderin) quantity in CMBs. A radiologist resident detected the QSMs and region of interest (ROI) study was performed on eighty randomly selected ROIs, containing a CMB and some surrounding normal tissue. According to the statistical results, QSM was proposed as an improved approach, which results in higher signal change between CMB and the surrounding tissue, reveals the actual size of the CMBs and provides quantitative measures that are independent of the imaging parameters.