Joint Intracranial and Carotid Vessel Wall Imaging in 5 minutes Using Compressed Sensing Accelerated DANTE-SPACE

Objectives: To compare visualization of joint intracranial and carotid vessel walls between 5× compressed sensing accelerated three-dimensional DANTE-SPACE sequence (CS VWI) acquired in 5 min and the same sequence accelerated by 2.7× parallel imaging (PI VWI) which takes 9-10 min currently.

Methods: Following institutional review board approval and informed consent, 28 subjects including 20 stroke patients underwent PI and CS VWI examinations with an acquired spatial resolution of isotropic 0.55 mm and joint coverage of intracranial and carotid arteries. Quantitative wall thickness measurements of CS VWI and PI VWI were compared on healthy volunteers and patients with wall thickening respectively. Subjective wall visualizations of the two VWI methods on patients were scored by two radiologists blindly and independently using a 4-point scale followed by inter-rater reproducibility analysis.

Results: Linear regression analysis of wall thickness measurements showed excellent agreement between CS VWI and PI VWI in both healthy volunteers (r = 0.99) and stroke patients with wall thickening (r = 0.99). Subjective wall visualization score of CS VWI was slightly lower than PI VWI (3.13 ± 0.41 vs. 3.31 ± 0.79) but still had good diagnostic quality (> 3 based on a 4-point scale). The two radiologists' scores agreed excellently, evidenced by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) values being higher than 0.75 (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Compressed sensing expedients joint intracranial and carotid VWI acquired at an isotropic resolution of 0.55 mm in 5 min without compromising quantitative vessel wall thickness measurement or diagnostic wall visualization.

Key Points: • CS VWI facilitates comprehensive visualization of intracranial and carotid vessel walls at an acquired isotropic resolution of 0.55 mm in a single 5-min scan. • CS VWI affords comparable vessel wall visualization and morphology measurement as PI VWI with a shortened acquisition time by 45%. • CS VWI alleviates the intensive trade-off between imaging resolution and scan time, and benefits the scan efficiency, motion robustness, and patient tolerance of high-resolution joint intracranial and carotid VWI.