Brain arteriovenous malformation diagnosis: value of time-resolved contrast-enhanced MR angiography at 3.0T compared to DSA

Abstract

TR-CE-MRA at 3.0 T has a good sensitivity for bAVM detection and good agreement with DSA for determining nidus size and the type of venous drainage, suggesting that TR-CE-MRA is potentially a reliable tool for the diagnosis and assessment of bAVMs. However, it still suffers from low spatial resolution and vessel superposition, making differentiation of the arterial feeders of the nidus difficult at times.

Value of 4D MR Angiography at 3T Compared with DSA for the Follow-Up of Treated Brain Arteriovenous Malformation

“…In addition, temporal and spatial resolution can be further improved up to an acceleration factor of 60 by optimizing the use of intelligent k-space sampling techniques (ie, CENTRA, parallel imaging, and partial Fourier imaging), whereas our examinations had an acceleration factor of 40, equivalent to other recent publications. 17,[19][20][21]28,31 Second, the interobserver agreement for DSA was not as high as expected compared with 4D-MRA, though it was very good ( 0.84, 95% CI .69 -.98 and 0.82, 95% CI .67-.98, respectively) for the reasons explained above.…”

“…17 Actually, 4D-MRA permits the effective diagnosis and classification of bAVM. [17][18][19][20] The value of 4D-MRA for the follow-up of patients with a treated bAVM has been rarely evaluated. 21,22 The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of 4D-MRA at 3T for the follow-up of patients with a treated bAVM.…”

The use of contrast-enhanced, time-resolved magnetic resonance angiography in cerebrovascular pathology

“…Machet et al compared CE TR-MRA to DSA in 19 cases, and found that MRA was able to diagnose the AVM in 17 cases (89.5%). 17 In both cases of MRA failure, the nidus was smaller than 1 cm in size and an overlying hematoma was postulated to have hidden the nidus. Similarly, Cuong et al found a 100% correlation between CE TR-MRA and DSA in 14 AVMs.…”

“…Machet et al found good agreement between CE TR-MRA and DSA in evaluating nidus size and venous drainage (k = 0.75, 0.77), and moderate agreement (k = 0.44) for arterial feeders. 17 Another important aspect in the evaluation of AVMs is the Spetzler-Martin (SM) scale. As most neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons know, the morbidity and mortality of AVM treatment has been linked to SM grade.…”

Hemodynamic Quantification in Brain Arteriovenous Malformations With Time-Resolved Spin-Labeled Magnetic Resonance Angiography

“…4,5 Recently, unenhanced time-resolved spin-labeled MRA (4D-SL-MRA) has been reported to allow anatomic AVM characterization reliably 3 and to overcome previous limitations by achieving high temporal resolutions of 50 to 100 ms, [6][7][8] thus reducing vessel superposition 9 and increasing the accuracy of further quantitative analysis.…”