The Evaluation Value Of Intracranial Vascular Abnormalities In Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke Using High Resolution Vessel Wall Magnetic Resonance Imaging

BACKGROUNDAs an emerging tool, high resolution vessal wall magnetic resonance imaging (HRMRI) has unique advantages. Our research aims to explore the capability of this very young technology in the evaluation of intracranial vascular abnormalities of acute ischemic stroke patients.Thus making better use of it in future clinical pratice and medical research.METHODWe retrospectively collected 235 cases of patients with suspected acute ischemic stroke who undergone HRMRI procedures. Cases with low qualtiy of images, incomplete outcome data and without other imaging procedures than HRMRI are excluded. We analyzed 2 groups of data:49 patients in Group A who has both HRMRI and DSA results; 99 patients in Group B who has both HRMRI and CTA results. In each group we compared the results between HRMRI and other imaging procedures, which is either DSA or CTA.RESULTAbnormalities of intracranial vascluar are found more frequently on HRMRI than both DSA (22.08% vs 12.80%, P＜0.001) and CTA (16.34% vs 8.26%, P<0.05), especially at locations of MCAs. DSA is considered the golden standard for intracranial vascular abnormality, HRMRI has a sensitivity of 88.0% and a specificity of 87.9% when referred to DSA. MCAs tends to have higher prevalence of vascular abnormalities.CONCLUSIONCompared with DSA and CTA, HRMRI finds more abnormalities of intracranial vessels and shows goood sensitivity and specificity. HRMRI is a valid method to evaluate intracranial vacular abnormalities.