Mo Kadbi1, Hui Wang1, Melanie Traughber2, Motaz Alshaher1, Andrea Yancey3, Jens Heidenreich1, Amir A. Amini1
1University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, United States; 2Philips healthcare, Cleveland, United States; 3VA hospital, Louisville, KY, United States
Phase contrast MRI is a non-invasive technique to assess cardiovascular blood flow. However, this technique is not accurate in cases where there is atherosclerotic disease and the blood flow is disturbed.. Carotid bifurcation is one of the main sites of atherosclerosis is and a good example of complex and disturbed blood flow due to atypical geometry of this branch site. Therefore, conventional PC MRI at the site of carotid bifuraction suffers from intravoxel dephasing and flow artifacts. In this work, a 3D UTE PC imaging method is designed to measure the blood velocity in carotid bifurcation using a center-out radial trajectory and short TE time compared to standard PC MRI sequences. With 3D UTE-PC combined quantification and visualization of blood flow in the region of interest is possible.
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