A New Method for Quantifying Abdominal Aortic Wall Shear Stress Using Phase Contrast Magnetic Resonance Imaging and the Womersley Solution

Wall shear stress (WSS) is an important mediator of cardiovascular pathologies and there is a need for its reliable evaluation as a potential prognostic indicator. The purpose of this work was to develop a method that quantifies WSS from two-dimensional (2D) phase contrast magnetic resonance (PCMR) imaging derived flow waveforms, apply this method to PCMR data acquired in the abdominal aorta of healthy volunteers, and to compare PCMR-derived WSS values to values predicted from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The method uses PCMR-derived flow versus time waveforms constrained by the Womersley solution for pulsatile flow in a cylindrical tube. The method was evaluated for sensitivity to input parameters, intrastudy repeatability and was compared with results from a patient-specific CFD simulation. 2D-PCMR data were acquired in the aortas of healthy men (n = 12) and women (n = 15) and time-averaged WSS (TAWSS) was compared. Agreement was observed when comparing TAWSS between CFD and the PCMR flow-based method with a correlation coefficient of 0.88 (CFD: 15.0 ± 1.9 versus MRI: 13.5 ± 2.4 dyn/cm2) though comparison of WSS values between the PCMR-based method and CFD predictions indicate that the PCMR method underestimated instantaneous WSS by 3.7 ± 7.6 dyn/cm2. We found no significant difference in TAWSS magnitude between the sexes; 8.19 ± 2.25 versus 8.07 ± 1.71 dyn/cm2, p = 0.16 for men and women, respectively.