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.