Longitudinal MRA Tortuosity Metric Measurements in a Population-based Study

Motivation: Current understanding of dolichoectasia has largely been drawn from patients with clinical need for brain imaging in the cross-sectional settings. Goal(s): To characterize the longitudinal changes in brain MRA geometry vessel metrics and their associations with demographic variables, imaging biomarkers and cognitive performance. Approach: Basic demographic and clinical information were compared between two groups w/wo MRI metric measurement change using two-sample t-tests. The associations between MRI metrics and cognitive decline or incidence dementia were tested using logistic regression. Results: MRA geometry vessel metric change was not associated with the cognitive decline over time (3.6-8 years). Baseline cognitive score can predict future cognitive performance. Impact: Clinical predictors of worsening dolichoectasia are unknown. Although MRA geometry vessel metric changes are not significant with cognitive decline, demographic variables show significance on some metric difference. Baseline cognitive score can also predict cognitive change.