Optimized analysis of blood flow and wall shear stress in the common carotid artery of rat model by phase-contrast MRI

Figures

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  Figure 1. One representative set of time-resolved profiles from different VENC settings for blood flow from (a) scan 1 and (b) scan 2 and WSS from (c) scan 1 and (d) scan 2 by the gated PC-MRI strategy. Both blood flow and WSS show repeatable measurements.

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  Figure 2. Influences of gated and non-gated strategies and varied values of VENC on (a) blood flow, (b) WSS, (c) artery area, and their corresponding CoVs ((d), (e), and (f), respectively).

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  Figure 3. Phase images from a representative rat CCA with in-plane resolution of (a) 0.63 mm, (b) 0.31 mm, (c) 0.21 mm, and (d) 0.16 mm. Red arrows indicate the locations of CCA.

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  Figure 4. Effects of different in-plane resolution values on (a) blood flow, (b) WSS, (c) artery area, and their corresponding CoVs [(d),(e) and (f), respectively]. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01.

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  Figure 5. Illustration of the position of PC-MRI scans and representative images. (a) Example of PC-MRI slice position on the reconstructed sagittal and coronal view from the time-of-flight (TOF) angiogram. The yellow line indicates the image plane of PC-MRI at the level of middle of common carotid artery (CCA). (b) Anatomy and phase images from a representative rat. Red arrows indicate the phase aliasing when VENC of 60 cm/s was used. With higher VENC setting, the phase aliasing vanished.