Clinical Assessment of motion sensitized driven equilibrium (MSDE) prepared T1W 3D vessel wall imaging at 3.0T for soft plaque screening

INTRODUCTION: Motion sensitized driven equilibrium (MSDE) prepared sequence has been proposed for fast black-blood vessel wall imaging (1, 2). Moreover, for detection of different kinds of plaques at the carotid artery wall, MSDE prepared 3D gradient echo sequence, optimized both for T1 and T2 contrasts, was proposed (3). This method allows wider anatomical coverage in short acquisition time compared to the conventional 2D double inversion recovery (DIR) turbo spin echo (TSE) approach, and hence is promising for vessel wall screening. However, the contrast optimization study was performed in normal volunteers, and therefore the clinical utility has not been established. For vessel wall screening, T1 contrast is important for detection of soft plaques, which are considered a risk factor for brain infarction. Soft plaques have been demonstrated as hyper intensities on T1W DIR-TSE images (4). The purpose of this study was to compare plaque signal behavior between T1W MSDE and T1W DIR-TSE and to assess clinical utility of T1W MSDE sequence for plaque screening.