Reproducibility of simultaneous imaging of intracranial and extracranial arterial vessel walls using an improved T1-weighted DANTE-SPACE sequence on a 3 T MR system

Purpose: To systematically investigate the scan-rescan, intra-observer, and inter-observer reproducibility of an improved DANTE-SPACE sequence for the simultaneous assessment of intra- and extracranial arterial vessel wall morphology. Materials and methods: Thirty-five healthy volunteers and 10 patients with atherosclerotic plaque formation were each scanned twice using a T1-weighted DANTE-SPACE sequence on a 3 T MR system equipped with a 32-channel combined head and neck coil. Reproducibility analyses were performed for measurements of lumen and vessel wall volume, mean and maximum wall thickness, as well as for the normalized wall index. Intracranial and extracranial arterial segments were compared. Results: Infra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) and Bland-Altman plots indicated good to excellent reproducibility for all morphologic measurements (all ICCs > 0.77). In addition, the range of ICCs of extracranial arteries (0.80-0.99) was significant higher than that of intracranial arteries (0.77-0.98, P = 0.003). The range of ICCs of patients (0.79-0.99) was generally higher than that of volunteers (0.77-0.99, P = 0.47), especially for extracranial arteries. Conclusions: The improved T1-weighted DANTE-SPACE sequence is a reproducible method for the simultaneous assessment of intra- and extracranial vessel wall using a single MR scan. This method could potentially be used for assessing responses to therapy and for monitoring disease progression.