MSCT angiographic study of the major cerebral arteries in healthy adults.

Objective: To observe the courser and morphology of the major cerebral arteries and the inner diameters in their origin, and the display rate of their branches at all levels on multi-slice spiral CT angiographic (MSCTA) imaging in healthy adults. The authors expect to provide useful imaging data for the diagnosis of cerebrovascular diseases. Methods: Forty cases normal series images were selected from the cerebral arterial 64-slice MSCTA images of health volunteer randomly. The inner diameter in their origin, courser and morphology of the main cerebral arteries were observed by an ADW 4.2 workstation. The display rate of their branches at all levels was also calculated. Results: The frequent variability was found in the A1 segment of anterior cerebral artery (ACA), anterior communicating artery (ACoA), posterior communicating artery (PCoA), and P1 segment of posterior cerebral artery (PCA) which constitute a circle of willis, and the noticeable variability was PCoA. The frequency of MSCTA to display the major cerebral arteries including the end segment of ICA, A1 segment of ACA, middle cerebral artery (MCA), PCA, ophthalmic artery (OA), AcoA, PcoA, and anterior choroidal artery (AchA) was 100%, 95%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 92.5%, 58.8% and 72.5% respectively. The inner diameters of the main cerebral arteries were 4.013±0.770 mm, 2.709±0.877 mm, 3.498±0.640 mm, 2.025±0.608 mm, 1.640±0.334 mm, 1.491±0.697 mm and 1.460±0.483 mm respectively for the end segment of ICA, ACA, MCA, PCA, OA, PcoA, and AchA. Conclusion: The cerebral arterial variabilities in healthy adults distributed predominantly in the circle of willis. The diameter of the cerebral arteries is related to their territorial distribution and hemodynamic factors.