Key result
A novel 4D flow MRI method successfully estimated global composite flow waveforms of distal cerebral arteries, demonstrating agreement with reference methods and capturing age-related pulsatility.
Why the study?
Age-related arterial stiffening and excessive cerebral arterial pulsatility may cause blood-brain barrier breakdown, brain atrophy, and cognitive decline, spurring interest in non-invasive methods to measure distal vessel pulsatility.
Can 4D flow MRI accurately measure distal cerebral arterial pulsatility to assess age-related changes?
Observational
Can 4D flow MRI accurately measure distal cerebral arterial pulsatility to assess age-related changes?
A novel 4D flow MRI technique can non-invasively measure distal cerebral arterial pulsatility, providing a potential tool to study its role in cognitive decline and dementia.
4D flow MRI enables distal cerebral pulsatility estimation; leaves open clinical utility for cognitive risk stratification.
Recent reports have suggested that age-related arterial stiffening and excessive cerebral arterial pulsatility cause blood-brain barrier breakdown, brain atrophy and cognitive decline. This has spurred interest in developing non-invasive methods to measure pulsatility in distal vessels, closer to the cerebral microcirculation. Here, we report a method based on four-dimensional (4D) flow MRI to estimate a global composite flow waveform of distal cerebral arteries. The method is based on finding and sampling arterial waveforms from thousands of cross sections in numerous small vessels of the brain, originating from cerebral cortical arteries. We demonstrate agreement with internal and external reference methods and show the ability to capture significant increases in distal cerebral arterial pulsatility as a function of age. The proposed approach can be used to advance our understanding regarding excessive arterial pulsatility as a potential trigger of cognitive decline and dementia.
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Vikner et al. (2019) reported an observational. 4D flow MRI vs. Internal and external reference methods was evaluated on Agreement with reference methods and capture of age-related pulsatility increases. A novel 4D flow MRI method successfully estimated global composite flow waveforms of distal cerebral arteries, demonstrating agreement with reference methods and capturing age-related pulsatility.
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