High-resolution intracranial vessel wall imaging using 3D CUBE T1 weighted sequence

Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility of high-resolution 3D CUBE T1WI for intracranial vessel wall imaging. Methods: High-resolution 3D CUBE T1 weighted intracranial vessel wall images (0.4 mm x 0.4 mm x 0.4 mm) of 50 patients were retrospectively evaluated. A 5-point scale (1 poor, 5 excellent) was used to score the imaging quality for displaying the vessel wall of every intracranial artery segments. The inter-observer and intra-observer reproducibility of identifying plaques, intraplaque hemorrhage/luminal thrombosis, and wall enhancement were calculated. Results: Totally 893 artery segments were evaluated. 3D CUBE T1WI displayed the arteries wall and lumen clearly, with the highest score (4.920 +/- 0.837) for the C6-7 segments and the lowest (3.370 +/- 1.107) for the C3 segments of the internal carotid artery (ICA). Both intra-observer and inter-observer reproducibility were high for identification of normal walls (kappa = 0.928, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.891-0.954; kappa = 0.911, CI 0.868-0.940), plaque (kappa = 0.924, CI 0.884-0.954; kappa = 0.907, CI 0.866-0.943), luminal thrombosis (kappa = 1.000, CI 1.000-1.000; kappa = 1.000, CI 1.000-1.000), and wall enhancement (kappa = 1.000, CI 1.000-1.000; kappa = 0.914, CI 0.863-0.961). Conclusions: High-resolution 3D CUBE T1WI displayed intracranial wall and lumen clearly, and detected intracranial artery abnormalities with high reproducibility. (c) 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.