Feasibility of Local Stiffness Measurement for Intracranial Arteries Using Time-resolved 3D Black-blood Cine MRI

Motivation: Local stiffness of intracranial arteries may provide regional assessment of vessel changes and information about vessel pathologies, but so far there is no reliable method to measure it. Goal(s): To propose a black-blood MRI technique with submillimeter isotropic resolution and multiple cardiac phases, and to explore its feasibility of measuring local stiffness of intracranial arteries. Approach: A novel time-resolved 3D black-blood cine MRI was proposed combining MERGE, golden-angle radial, retrospective gating, and GRASP reconstruction. MOCHA pipeline was used to measure cardiac-driven lumen changes. Results: Images obtained with our proposed technique can capture cardiac-driven lumen area changes that are essential for local stiffness measurement. Impact: The proposed method, after validation, can serve as a unique local stiffness measurement tool for intracranial arteries that will highly benefit vascular imaging studies.