title: In Vivo Validation of Simultaneous Non-Contrast Angiography and intraPlaque Hemorrhage (SNAP) Magnetic Resonance Angiography: An Intracranial Artery Study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Simultaneous Non-contrast Angiography and intraPlaque hemorrhage (SNAP) technique was recently proposed for joint MRA and intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH) imaging. The purpose of this study is to validate SNAP's MRA performance in patients with suspected intracranial artery disease.
  
  
  METHODS
  SNAP and time-of-flight (TOF) techniques with matched field of view and resolution were applied on 15 patients with suspected intracranial artery disease. Both techniques were evaluated based on their detection of luminal stenosis of bilateral middle cerebral arteries (MCA) and the delineation of smallest visible branches (SVB) of the MCA. Statistical analysis was conducted on the artery level.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The SNAP MRA was found to provide similar stenosis detection performance when compared with TOF (Cohen's κ 0.79; 95% Confidence Interval: 0.56-0.99). For the SVB comparison, SNAP was found to provide significantly better small artery delineation than TOF (p = 0.017). Inter-reader reproducibility for both measurements on SNAP was over 0.7. SNAP also detected IPH lesions on 13% of the patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The SNAP technique's MRA performance was optimized and compared against TOF for intracranial artery atherosclerosis imaging and was found to provide comparable stenosis detection accuracy. Along with its IPH detection capability, SNAP holds the potential to become a first-line screening tool for high risk intracranial atherosclerosis disease evaluation.
authors: Clinical Sites Research Program, Philips Research North America, Briarcliff Manor, New York, United States of America.
authors: Jinnan
authors: J
authors: Wang
authors: Department of Radiology, Yangzhou First People's Hospital, Yangzhou, China.
authors: Maobin
authors: M
authors: Guan
authors: Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors: Kiyofumi
authors: K
authors: Yamada
authors: Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors: Daniel S
authors: DS
authors: Hippe
authors: Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors: William S
authors: WS
authors: Kerwin
authors: Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.|Center for Biomedical Imaging Research, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors: Chun
authors: C
authors: Yuan
authors: Tomographic Imaging Systems, Philips Research Europe, Hamburg, Germany.
authors: Peter
authors: P
authors: Börnert
authors: Center for Biomedical Imaging Research, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors: Xihai
authors: X
authors: Zhao
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001158:Arteries / Q000473:pathology; D016893:Carotid Stenosis / Q000473:pathology; D003251:Constriction, Pathologic; D003287:Contrast Media / Q000737:chemistry; D006470:Hemorrhage / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D002537:Intracranial Arteriosclerosis / Q000473:pathology*; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D020768:Middle Cerebral Artery / Q000503:physiopathology; D059906:Neuroimaging; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media