Evaluation of Supracardiac Atherosclerosis in Stroke with a Noncontrast Head-Neck-Aortic Vessel Wall MRI - PubMed
6 hours ago
- #MRI
- #stroke
- #atherosclerosis
- Supracardiac atherosclerosis is a major cause of stroke.
- A noncontrast head-neck-aortic vessel wall MRI (vwMRI) protocol was developed with neural network-based acceleration and multichannel coils, achieving a scan time of ~15 minutes.
- 108 participants with acute ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack underwent both vwMRI and supra-aortic CT angiography (CTA).
- vwMRI showed a higher plaque detection rate (81.5%) compared to CTA (69.4%).
- vwMRI achieved 91% accuracy in detecting calcification, identified intraplaque hemorrhage in 27.8% of participants, and showed comparable ulceration rates to CTA.
- vwMRI helped reclassify 16 out of 38 participants initially diagnosed with embolic stroke of undetermined source (ESUS), reducing ESUS cases from 35.2% to 20.4%.
- The study concluded that the vwMRI protocol is feasible and outperforms CTA in plaque detection.