Julien Sein1, Shahram Majidi2, Saqib Chaudry2, Nauman Tariq2, Dingxin Wang1, 3, Gregor Adriany1, Eddie Auerbach1, Kamil Ugurbil1, Muhammad Fareed Suri2, Pierre-Francois Van de Moortele1
1CMRR, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States; 2Zeenat Qureshi Stroke Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States; 3Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.
Brain vessel wall MRI is expected to benefit from gains in SNR and tissue contrast at high magnetic fields. A 7-Tesla human MRI scanner was chosen to investigate both ex-vivo and in-vivo achievable cerebral vessel MR. Ex-vivo samples excised from human cadaver brains in the Circle of Willis area were imaged with the 3D SPACE MR sequence. in vivo, a pool of healthy subjects was scanned at 0.64 mm isotropic resolution with same sequence. Comparison of ex-vivo MR images with virtual histology intravascular ultrasound allowed for distinction of vessel wall boundaries and plaque components on MR images.
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