Abstract 273: New Reconstruction Technique for MRA to “Fly Through” the Lumen of the Cerebral Vasculature
Methods Patient exams were performed under an IRB-approved protocol. Two 3D SWIRLS [3] single phase contrast-enhanced angiographies with 1mm3 spatial resolution were used for this work. Clinical exams were acquired on 3.0 T scanners (GE, DVMR 20.1IB, Milwaukee, WI). Data analysis The angiogram was post-processed using tree analysis and virtual endoscopy modules of Analyze 11.0 software (Analyze 11.0; Biomedical Imaging Resource, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN) to fly through the artery. A statistical parameter called Brightness Area Product (BAP) was defined as the sum of the intensities above the sample minimum intensity/threshold set by the user. Results and Discussions Figures (I-IV) show the methodology to fly through the part of anterior carotid artery (ACA) and all statistics of part of the artery (Fig. IV) with angles from the “Root” to its different branches of A1 to G2 (Fig. III). Figure II shows the snap shot of the fly through/internal cross sectional structure of ACA of branch “E2”, at the location marked as “red dot”. Table (IV) represents different statistics including length, angle from the root, area of cross section and the BAP of the branches mentioned in Fig. III. The computation time for this method is < 5 minutes compared to the other reconstruction techniques (>~30 minutes). We proposed a simple and fast automated post-processing method to fly through the artery using Analyze 11.0 software. This technique can be extended to any arteries to monitor internal vasculature and to estimate the stenosis using the statistical parameter BAP, which generates a master profile/database of arteries. References 1 Shu Y, Bernstein MA, ISMRM 2009 p764.