Relationship between carotid plaque surface morphology and perfusion: a 3D DCE-MRI study

Figures

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  Fig. 1. a Shows DCE images at different time frames at a single slice location within an ICA branch of the plaque. The dashed red and green lines in frame 5 show the boundary of carotid lumen and adventitia. b Shows the corresponding black blood T1w image with red and green lines delineating the lumen and wall boundary. c Represents the mean signal intensity time course within the lumen (red) and adventitia (green)

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  Fig. 2. An ulcerated plaque in the multi-contrast MR protocol, including MIP from CE-MRA, oblique and axial reformat of CE-MRA, TOF-MRA, T1w, DTI, CE-T1w and VVI. The white arrow in CE-MRA suggests the ulcer arises perpendicularly from the lumen. The ulcer can be clearly seen on the CE-MRA images, while it is not clearly visible on the TOF-MRA images. The pre-contrast T1w image shows the lumen surface irregularity, and a thin or ruptured FC can be seen on the post-contrast T1w images (black arrow). The hyperintense area on MR-DTI represents a large intraplaque haemorrhage/thrombus (white arrow). The VVI has the range of v p from 0 to 65% and K trans from 0 to 0.5 min−1 which shows a high K trans region at the adventitia

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  Fig. 3. Comparison of pharmacokinetic parameters in smooth and ulcerated/irregular plaque

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  Fig. 4. a Shows the significant correlation between stenosis and adventitial K trans. b Shows the significant correlation between stenosis and adventitial v p. There is no significant correlation between plaque K trans or v p and stenosis (c, d)

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  Fig. 5. Bland-Altman plots of the PK parameters derived after modelling the linear and non-linear relationships of signal intensity and Gd concentration. There is a significantly bias in PK values when using linear and non-linear assumption of image signal to Gd concentration. Note that \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$K_{1}^{\text{trans}}$$\end{document}K1trans and v p1 represent the linear model, and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$K_{2}^{\text{trans}}$$\end{document}K2trans and v p2 represent the non-linear model