title: Joint blood and cerebrospinal fluid suppression for intracranial vessel wall MRI.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop and evaluate a joint blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) suppression technique for improved intracranial vessel wall MR imaging.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Delay Alternating with Nutation for Tailored Excitation (DANTE) prepulse was specifically optimized for CSF suppression to improve vessel wall and CSF contrast. It was evaluated on six patients and three healthy volunteers. CSF suppression efficiency, lumen signal to noise ratio, and wall-lumen contrast to noise ratio were compared between images with and without DANTE in major intercranial artery segments. Contrast changes in tissues were also compared with evaluate the technique's compatibility with multicontrast imaging techniques.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The optimized DANTE images significantly improved intracranial vessel wall characterization on all images. Quantitatively, CSF to wall contrast improved by 28% (DANTE-VISTA 1.354 ± 0.216 versus VISTA 1.057 ± 0.13; P < 0.001). DANTE also significantly improved wall-lumen (10.55 ± 3.79 versus 9.34 ± 3.54; P < 0.001) and wall-CSF (4.62 ± 3.19 versus 0.78 ± 2.30; P < 0.001) contrast-to-noise ratios. DANTE prepared images were also found to make only minimal impact on static tissue contrast.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  DANTE prepared MR imaging can significantly improve contrast between the vessel wall and cerebral spinal fluid in major intracranial arteries, holding a good potential to be combined with multicontrast protocol for intracranial wall imaging.
authors.affiliation: Philips Research North America, Briarcliff Manor, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Jinnan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Philips GmbH Innovative Technologies, Research Laboratories, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Helle
authors.affiliation: CBIR, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Zechen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Philips GmbH Innovative Technologies, Research Laboratories, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Börnert
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Hatsukami
authors.affiliation: CBIR, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.|Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
authors.forename: Chun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yuan
mesh_terms: D050197:Atherosclerosis / Q000473:pathology*; D001769:Blood; D002555:Cerebrospinal Fluid; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D003198:Computer Simulation; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio
keywords: DANTE; intracranial artery; vessel wall