Jos J.M. Westenberg1, Dennis Hendriksen1, Paul Steendijk2, Rob J. van der Geest1, Heynric B. Grotenhuis1, Maarten Groenink3, J W. Jukema2, Albert de Roos1, Johan H.C. Reiber1
1Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 2Cardiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 3Cardiology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
An improved method to determine the aortic Pulse Wave Velocity with 2-directional inplane velocity-encoded MRI is presented. The accuracy of this method is tested in 15 patients by comparing MRI with invasive pressure measurements (ie. the gold standard for Pulse Wave Velocity-assessment). The reproducibility of the method is tested by repeated acquisition in 15 healthy volunteers. The new method shows excellent agreement with the gold standard and is highly reproducible, whereas the conventional MRI-method (1-directional through-plane MRI) agrees less with the gold standard and shows more variation.
Keywords