Electronic Posters: Cardiovascular

Vessel Wall Imaging (Non-Coronary)

Hall B Monday 14:00-16:00 Computer 36

14:00 3680. 3D Contrast-Enhanced Flow-Insensitive Peripheral Vessel Wall Imaging

Jingsi Xie¹, Zhaoyang Fan¹, Debiao Li<sup>1

1</sup>Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States

Develop a 3D contrast-enhanced flow-insensitive vessel wall imaging technique

14:30 3681. Quantitative Analysis of DCE-MRI to Identify and Characterize Plaque at Early Stages (AHA I-III)

Zhuoli Zhang¹, Nicole Mascheri¹, Jose Agraz¹, Zhaoyang Fan¹, Richard Tang¹, Xiaoming Bi², Peter Weale², Debiao Li<sup>1

1</sup>Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States; ²Siemens Healthcare , Chicago, IL, United States

Atherosclerotic disease is thought to begin shortly after birth. Through the years, plaques grow slowly, with variable morphologic aspects and properties at different stages of development. The American Heart Association (AHA) has established criteria by which plaques are classified according to content and structure. It is important to differentiate young stable plaques with a low extracellular lipid content that are not dangerous (types I–III) from unstable more dangerous types (IV-Vc). However, the molecular mediators of atherosclerosis at type I-III are an area of great interest in basic science. Characterization of plaque using MRI at a very early stage is very important for understanding disease process, choosing appropriate prevention and treatment strategies. Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) may play an important role to identify and characterize plaque at type I-III.

15:00 3682. Contrast Kinetics of Gadolinium Uptake May Discriminate Stable from Vulnerable Atherosclerotic Plaque

Alkystis Phinikaridou¹, Christopher Sucato¹, Stephan Anderson², James A. Hamilton<sup>1

1</sup>Physiology & Biophysics, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States; ²Radiology, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States

We used a rabbit model of controlled atherothrombosis to test whether in vivo MRI can distinguish between plaques that disrupt after pharmacological triggering (vulnerable) and those that do not (stable). We employed in vivo dynamic contrast enhanced MRI to study the contrast kinetics of gadolinium (Gd-DTPA) in a quantitative manner, which could help to understand the mechanism of gadolinium uptake and derive standardized criteria that could permit a differentiation of stable from vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques.

15:30 3683. Carotid Plaque Burden Measurement Using Ultrafast 3D Black-Blood MRI

Niranjan Balu¹, Vasily Yarnykh¹, Baocheng Chu¹, Jinnan Wang², Thomas Hatsukami¹, Chun Yuan<sup>1

1</sup>University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States; ²Philips Research North America

Black-blood MRI is an established tool for carotid atherosclerotic plaque burden measurement. Accuracy of measurement can be improved by moving to isotropic imaging but can be challenging for patient compliance due to long scan times. In this work plaque assessment by an ultrafast isotropic 3D black-blood sequence (3D-MERGE) covering the entire cervical carotid arteries within 2 minutes is validated on patients with significant carotid plaque. 3D-MERGE provides good blood suppression and comparable plaque burden measurements to existing MRI protocols. Thus it provides a promising new tool for fast and accurate plaque burden assessment in patients with atherosclerotic plaque.