Xihai Zhao1,
Niranjan Balu2, Jinnan Wang3, Huilin Zhao4,
Jianrong Xu4, Chun Yuan1,2
1Department of
Biomedical Engineering & Center for Biomedical Imaging Research, School
of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, People's Republic of; 2Department
of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; 3Philips
Research North America, Briarcliff Manor, NY, USA; 4Department of
Radiology, Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China,
People's Republic of
Multicontrast vessel wall imaging has been widely used for characterizing carotid atherosclerosis. However, this imaging protocol could not assess the full spectrum of carotid atherosclerotic lesion distribution due to its limited longitudinal coverage (40 mm). Recently, 3D fast sequence MERGE with isotropic resolution, large-coverage (> 80 mm) and short-scan-time (2 min) is emerging as a promising approach for identification of carotid plaques. In this study, we used 3D MERGE sequence to determine carotid lesion distribution and found that near one fourth of lesions occurred in proximal common carotid artery which is beyond the imaging coverage of current multicontrast protocol.