Vessel Wall Imaging-Dedicated Automatic Processing Pipeline (VWI-APP): Towards Efficient and Reliable Intracranial Plaque Quantification

We propose an automatic pipeline for atherosclerosis plaque analysis based on magnetic resonance (MR) vessel wall imaging (VWI). The pipeline consists of five modules, i.e., 1) MR angiography (MRA) to VWI registration, 2) vessel centerline tracking, 3) vessel straightening and cross-sectional slices generating, 4) deep learning -based vessel wall and lumen segmentation, and 5) plaque quantification. The pipeline achieved good to excellent reliability for the clinically relevant plaque measures and largely reduced the analysis time required for physicians.