Electronic Posters: Cardiovascular

Thursday 13:30-15:30 Computer 36

13:30 3692. Improved Human Carotid Intraplaque Hemorrhage Imaging Using a Slab-Selective Phase-Sensitive Inversion-Recovery (SPI) Sequence

Jinnan Wang¹, Marina S. Ferguson², Niranjan Balu², Chun Yuan², Thomas S. Hatsukami², Peter Boernert<sup>3

1</sup>Clinical Sites Research Program, Philips Research North America, Seattle, WA, United States; ²University of Washington; ³Philips Research Europe

Intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH) plays a critical role in the evolution of carotid atherosclerotic disease. In this study, a Slab-selective Phase-sensitive Inversion-recovery (SPI) technique, which combines both phase sensitive (PS) imaging and a specially designed IR turbo field echo (TFE) sequence, is proposed to improve the IPH contrast and blood suppression efficiency in human carotid IPH imaging. Significantly improved IPH contrast and blood suppression were found in the in vivo atherosclerotic patient scanning.

14:00 3693. DWI of Carotid Atheroma - Detection of Lipid Rich Necrotic Core

Victoria Eleanor Louise Young¹, Andrew J. Patterson¹, Umar Sadat¹, David J. Bowden¹, Martin J. Graves^1,2, Andrew N. Priest^1,2, Tjun Y. Tang¹, Jeremy N. Skepper³, Peter J. Kirkpatrick⁴, Jonathan H. Gillard<sup>1

1</sup>University Department of Radiology, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom; ²Department of Medical Physics, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom; ³Multi-imaging Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom; ⁴Department of Neurosurgery, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom

Lipid-rich necrotic core (LR/NC), which is difficult to identify on MRI, has importance in predicting risk of clinical events. Previous studies using diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) for ex-vivo imaging have demonstrated a potential role for DWI. The aim of this study was to examine if DWI can be applied in vivo to differentiate LR/NC from fibrous cap. 28 patients with confirmed carotid atheroma were imaged at 1.5T using a dedicated 4 channel phased-array carotid coil and ADC maps produced. A significant difference was found between the ADC values for LR/NC and fibrous cap. DWI may provide addition information for plaque classification.

14:30 3694. Signal Evolution of Intraplaque Hemorrhage in Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Carotid Plaque: A Long-Term in Vivo High-Resolution Magnetic Resonance Imaging Follow-Up Study

Jianming Cai¹, Qingjun Wang¹, Yong Wang¹, Youquan Cai¹, Lin Ma¹, Chun Yuan<sup>2

1</sup>Radiology, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China; ²Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States

By using in vivo multi-contrast high-resolution MRI, we performed a long-term follow-up study on asymptomatic and symptomatic carotid intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH) to observe difference in signal evolution within each group and between the two groups. In the present study, each patient with eligible IPH was given a carotid MRI examination on a 3.0-T MRI scanner every 6 months during a total 3 years period. Our findings show that asymptomatic and symptomatic carotid IPH demonstrated a different MRI signal evolution. The repeated IPH may be more common in the symptomatic plaque than in the asymptomatic plaque.

15:00 3695. Prospective Self-Gating to Eliminate Motion Artifacts in 3D Carotid Artery Wall Imaging

Zhaoyang Fan^1,2, Sven Zuehlsdorff³, Peng Lai⁴, YiuCho Chung³, Jose Agraz^1,2, Debiao Li<sup>1,2

1</sup>Radiology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States; ²Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States; ³Cardiac MR R&D, Siemens Healthcare, Chicago, IL, United States; ⁴Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, United States

Self-gating technique has recently been used in a 3D variable-flip-angle TSE sequence to exclude data acquired during swallowing, yet two shortcomings remain. First, a single self-gating (SG) line acquired immediately before readout in each TR may not be adequate to detect motion if the readout duration is considerably long. Second, real-time update of the reference line used for the cross-correlation analysis is necessary given potentially involuntary “drift” during 3D imaging. This work demonstrated that two SG lines, acquired immediately before and after readout during each TR, in combination with real-time update of the reference line make swallowing-motion gating more robust.