Simultaneous Assessment of Arterial Pulsatility Across Multiple Segments of Cerebral Arteries Using Multiband Dual‐VENC Phase‐Contrast MRI

In this work, we proposed a multiband dual-VENC 2D PC-MRI technique termed MB-DV PC-MRI to simultaneously measure arterial pulsatility across multiple cerebral arterial segments, including both proximal greater and distal smaller arteries. A multiband SINC RF pulse was designed to simultaneously excite multiple slices with varied gaps between adjacent slices in MB-DV PC-MRI. A retrospectively gated MB-DV PC-MRI sequence was performed on 11 young (29.9 ± 7.3 years) and nine elderly (68.3 ± 11.1 years) to measure pulsatility indices (PIs) of multiple cerebral arterial segments. A test-retest study and a comparison study with conventional single-band 2D PC-MRI demonstrated MB-DV PC-MRI provides good reproducibility and reliability in cerebral PI measurements. Additionally, the damping factor (DF) was calculated as the ratio of PIs between proximal and distal vessel segments, showing good reproducibility. Compared to younger adults, elderly adults exhibited overall higher PI values across cerebral arterial segments and varied damping along ICA-MCA. This study demonstrates that MB-DV PC-MRI is a reliable technique for the assessment of arterial pulsatility along the cerebrovascular tree, which could be a useful imaging tool in studying the role of cerebrovascular dysfunction in aging and neurodegenerative diseases.