3-D Quantification of the Carotid Vessel Wall

3-D assessment of carotid artery using 3-D MRI of intraplaque hemorrhage and 3-D time of flight.

Vascular disease has a strong impact on quality of life and health care costs in Canada. Thus, it is important to diagnose the vascular dysfunction in early stages. The purpose of this study is to understand environmental risk factors for vascular disease, specifically carotid artery dysfunction. We aim to identify early substantial dysfunction in the carotid artery vessel using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

We apply in vivo high-spatial-resolution carotid 3-D MRI, using 3-D MRI of intraplaque hemorrhage and 3-D time of flight for quantification of vessel wall volume and intraplaque hemorrhage volume (MR Materials in Physics Biology and Medicine. 2004;16(5);227–34 and Int J Cardiovasc Imaging. 2013;29(7);1477–83).

3-D visualization of the segmented carotid artery (internal carotid artery and common carotid artery)