In vivo high-resolution MR imaging of symptomatic and asymptomatic middle cerebral artery atherosclerotic stenosis

Differential Features of Culprit Intracranial Atherosclerotic Lesions: A Whole‐Brain Vessel Wall Imaging Study in Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke

“…Also, a postmortem study found that neovascularity in intracranial atherosclerotic plaque is associated with infarct 28. Several studies of intracranial VWI have reported that plaque enhancement is associated with acute, subacute, and even chronic infarction 7, 15, 17, 29, 30. We found that strong contrast enhancement (grade 2) was associated with culprit lesions, likely suggesting greater neovascularization and/or inflammation activities in those lesions.…”

Etiology of intracranial stenosis in young patients: a high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging study

“…Eccentric stenosis were identified if the thinnest part of the wall was estimated to be less than 50% of the thickest point on at least one image slice of T2 weighted images (15 thinnest part of the wall was estimated to be no less than 50% of the thickest point on all image slices or a stenosis without wall thickening (8). We defined the reference sites as the nearest plaque-free segments proximal or distal to the maximal lumen narrowing sites.…”

“…This is a retrospective study based on a prospectively e s t a b l i s h e d H R M R I d a t a b a s e , a p p r o v e d b y t h e ethics committee of Peking Union Medical College Hospital (15). Formal written consents were obtained from all the patients.…”

“…The details of HRMRI protocol were described elsewhere (15). Briefly, HRMRI was composed of cross-section T2 and T1 weighted imaging, which were perpendicular to M1 segment of MCA, with slice thickness 2 mm and gap 0-0.2 mm.…”

“…Consecutive young adult patients (from 18 to 45 years old) with transcranial Doppler (peak velocity >160 cm/s) or MRA suspected middle cerebral artery (MCA) stenosis were recruited (15). Patients were excluded if they had: (I) bilateral MCA stenosis or definite moyamoya disease, i.e., bilateral stenosis and/or occlusion of the intracranial internal carotid artery and its proximal branches, with development of collateral network (moyamoya vessels) (16); (II) extracranial carotid or vertebral artery stenosis; (III) cardiac embolic stroke; (IV) normal MRA and HRMRI findings; (V) poor image quality.…”