Simultaneous assessment of arterial pulsatility at different segments of cerebral arteries using multiband dual-VENC Phase-Contrast MRI

Motivation: Arterial pulsatility is used for assessing cerebral vascular dysfunction. However, 2D PC-MRI and 4D flow have limitations including multiple separate scans, prolonged scan time, and flow saturation effects. Goal(s): Our study aims to develop a Multi-band Dual-Venc PC-MRI (MB-DV) senquence to measure pulsatility for larger and distal small vessels within short scan time. Approach: MB-DV scans were performed on 8 subjects to image velocity waveforms from ICA, M2, M3, LSA, and M4 simultaneously. For comparison, multiple standard single-slice PC-MRI were performed. Results: MB-DV PC-MRI successfully measured flow waveforms and provided reliable PI measurements with no significant difference from PI measured by standard PC-MRI. Impact: MD-DV PC-MRI enables simultaneously assessing arterial pulsatility at multiple vessel segments in the brain within a short scan time, which could be a potentially useful imaging tool to study pulsatility in the cerebral vascular tree for cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.