title: The effects of healthy aging on intracerebral blood vessels visualized by magnetic resonance angiography.
abstract: Histological and magnetic resonance imaging studies have demonstrated that age-associated alterations of the human brain may be at least partially related to vascular alterations. Relatively little information has been published on vascular changes associated with healthy aging, however. The study presented in this paper examined vessels segmented from standardized, high-resolution, magnetic resonance angiograms (MRAs) of 100 healthy volunteers (50 males, 50 females), aged 18-74, without hypertension or other disease likely to affect the vasculature. The subject sample was divided into 5 age groups (n=20/group) with gender equally distributed per group. The anterior cerebral, both middle cerebral, and the posterior circulations were examined for vessel number, vessel radius, and vessel tortuosity. Males exhibited larger vessel radii regardless of age and across all anatomical regions. Both males and females displayed a lower number of MRA-discernible vessels with age, most marked in the posterior circulation. Age-associated tortuosity increases were relatively mild. Our multi-modal image database has been made publicly available for use by other investigators.
authors.affiliation: CASILab, CB #7062, Department of Surgery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, United States. bullitt@med.unc.edu
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bullitt
authors.forename: Donglin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Benedicte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mortamet
authors.forename: Arpita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ghosh
authors.forename: Stephen R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Aylward
authors.forename: Weili
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Bonita L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Marks
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology*; D020771:Anterior Cerebral Artery / Q000473:pathology; D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000473:pathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020768:Middle Cerebral Artery / Q000473:pathology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D055815:Young Adult