Phantom Investigation on the Accuracy of Different Pulse Sequences for the Determination of Arterial Distensibility

Valentina Taviani^1,2, Andrew James Patterson¹, Pauline Wong¹, Michael P. Sutcliffe², Martin John Graves¹, Jonathan Harvey Gillard¹

The distensibility coefficient, often used as an index of arterial elasticity, requires the maximum relative change in the luminal cross-sectional area to be determined. In this work a human-tissue-mimicking phantom was imaged using three different pulse sequences (cine phase-contrast, cine bright-blood and a custom-developed cine black-blood using spatial saturation bands). The results were compared with high resolution digital photography (HRDP) assumed to be the gold-standard. Cine black-blood best agreed with HRDP (rms deviation = 0.011mm) with cine phase data the worst (rms deviation = 0.113mm) resulting in a 26% underestimation of the distensibility coefficient compared to black-blood.