Carotid Plaque Assessment Using Fast 3D Isotropic-Resolution Black-Blood MRI

Niranjan Balu¹, Vasily Yarnykh¹, Baocheng Chu¹, Jinnan Wang¹, Thomas Hatsukami², Chun Yuan¹

Carotid atherosclerotic plaque burden assessment and compositional analysis using black-blood MRI is currently limited by large slice thickness. We present a new 3D black-blood sequence (3D BB) to image the entire cervical carotid arteries with isotropic 0.7 mm voxel size in 2 minutes, thus ensuring patient compliance and diagnostic image quality. In-vivo identification of calcification, hemorrhage and lipid core using the 3D BB sequence was validated against standard carotid MRI sequences on 15 patients.with high sensitivity and specificity for detection of all three components. 3D BB is a promising new tool for comprehensive plaque assessment using a single sequence.