Dataset Information

Comparison of MR and contrast venography of the cervical venous system in multiple sclerosis.

ABSTRACT:

Background and purpose

MRV has been proposed as a possible screening method to identify chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, which may play a role in MS. We report our initial experience comparing MRV and CV in MS patients to evaluate venous stenosis and collateral venous drainage.

Materials and methods

Time-of-flight and time-resolved imaging of contrast kinetics MRV and CV were performed in 39 MS patients. The presence and severity of both IJ vein caliber changes and non-IJ collaterals were graded by using a 4-point scale by 2 radiologists in an independent and blinded manner.

Results

Both studies frequently showed venous abnormalities, most commonly IJ flattening at the C1 level and in the lower neck. There was moderate-to-good agreement between the modalities (κ = 0.55; 95% CI, 0.45%-0.65%). For collaterals, agreement was only fair (κ = 0.30; 95% CI, 0.09%-0.50%). The prevalence of IJ segments graded mild or worse on CV was 54%. If CV was considered a standard, the sensitivity and specificity of MRV was 0.79 (0.71-0.86) and 0.76 (0.67-0.83), respectively. Degree of stenosis was related to the severity of collaterals for CV but not for MRV.

Conclusions

IJ caliber changes were seen in characteristic locations on both MRV and CV in MS patients. Agreement between modalities was higher for stenosis than for collaterals. If CV is considered a standard, MRV performance is good but may require additional improvement before MRV can be used for screening.

SUBMITTER: Zaharchuk G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7964372 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:MR Fingerprinting (MRF)-based Arterial-Spin-Labeling (ASL) has the potential to measure multiple parameters such as cerebral blood flow (CBF), bolus arrival time (BAT), and tissue T1 in a single scan. However, the previous reports have only demonstrated a proof-of-principle of the technique but have not examined the performance of the sequence in the context of key imaging parameters. Furthermore, there has not been a study to directly compare the technique to clinically used perfusion method of dynamic-susceptibility-contrast (DSC) MRI. The present report consists of two studies. In the first study (N = 8), we examined the dependence of MRF-ASL sequence on TR time pattern. Ten different TR patterns with a range of temporal characteristics were examined by both simulations and experiments. The results revealed that there was a significance dependence of the sequence performance on TR pattern (p < 0.001), although there was not a single pattern that provided dramatically improvements. Among the TR patterns tested, a sinusoidal pattern with a period of 125 TRs provided an overall best estimation in terms of spatial consistency. These experimental observations were consistent with those of numerical simulations. In the second study (N = 8), we compared MRF-ASL results with those of DSC MRI. It was found that MRF-ASL and DSC MRI provided highly comparable maps of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and bolus-arrival-time (BAT), with spatial correlation coefficients of 0.79 and 0.91, respectively. However, in terms of quantitative values, BAT obtained with MRF-ASL was considerably lower than that from DSC (p < 0.001), presumably because of the differences in tracer characteristics in terms of diffusible versus intravascular tracers. Test-retest assessment of MRF-ASL MRI revealed that the spatial correlations of parametric maps were 0.997, 0.962, 0.746 and 0.863 for B1 + , T1 , CBF, and BAT, respectively. MRF-ASL is a promising technique for assessing multiple perfusion parameters simultaneously without contrast agent.