Claudia
Calcagno1, Venkatesh Mani1, Sarayu Ramachandran1,
Silvia Aguiar1, John Postley2, Zahi A. Fayad1
1Radiology, Mount Sinai School of
Medicine, New York, NY, United States; 2Columbia University -
College of Physicians and Surgeons
Dynamic
contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI can quantify plaque inflammation in
atherosclerosis, however its reproducibility is still unknown. We present a
preliminary study of the inter-scan reproducibility of the area under the
curve (AUC) of contrast agent uptake calculated from DCE-MRI acquisitions in
patients with carotid atherosclerosis. We show excellent reproducibility of
plaque AUC relative to ipsi-lateral sternocleidomastoideal muscle AUC (ICC
respectively 0.972 and 0.755, p<0.05). This preliminary study show
encouraging results and suggests that DCE-MRI could be a useful tool for the
clinical evaluation of human atherosclerosis and/or in longitudinal clinical
drug trials.