Abstract #1305

Automatic Segmentation and Analysis of Carotid and Middle Cerebral Artery Using 3D CUBE MRI with IMSDE Blood Suppression

Chengcheng Zhu¹, Andrew J. Patterson¹, Jin Zhu², Martin John Graves¹, Jonathan H. Gillard¹

¹University Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom; ²Department of Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing, China

Atherosclerotic plaques presenting within extra- and intra-cranial arteries are known to be risk factors for subsequent stroke. High resolution artery vessel wall MRI can visualize high-risk morphologic factors of plaques in vivo and help patient risk stratification. 3D CUBE has demonstrated a high SNR efficiency as well as intrinsic black-blood effects in vessel wall imaging. Improved motion-sensitized driven-equilibrium (iMSDE) preparation provides better blood suppression than traditional spatial saturation and double inversion-recovery (DIR) methods. This study investigated the automatic segmentation and analysis of carotid and middle cerebral artery (MCA) using T1w/T2w CUBE combined with iMSDE blood suppression.