Automatic 3D Segmentation of perforating arteries from ultra-high resolution 7T Compressed Sensing MRA images.

The evaluation of perforating arteries is important for the diagnosis of small vessel disease. It’s challenging to image perforating arteries because of their small caliber size, which requires an extremely high resolution. Moreover, to determine pathological changes, the vessel trees need to be segmented and quantified. In this study, an automatic 3D Segmentation method was introduced and perforating arteries around the Circle of Willis were segmented and quantified. The number of stems of perforators was counted and compared based on segmentation results and MIPs images. The results revealed that the segmentation method robustly achieved the segmentation of perforators.