Quantitative phase contrast MRI of penetrating arterioles in cerebral white matter in patients with diabetes at 7T

Brain lesions caused by cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) are commonly observed in the elderly. However, it remains challenging to noninvasively measure the early pathological changes of the underlying vessels. To this end, we evaluated the feasibility of detecting changes in white matter penetrating arterioles (PA) with 7T MRI in patients with diabetes, a known risk factor for SVD, but without severe SVD and in age and gender matched healthy controls (HC). We observed lower flow velocities in PAs in the patients, suggesting that early changes in PA that are discriminative of overt SVD risks can be detected at 7T.