TY - JOUR
T1 - Amplified Flow Imaging (aFlow)
T2 - A Novel MRI-Based Tool to Unravel the Coupled Dynamics between the Human Brain and Cerebrovasculature
AU - Abderezaei, Javid
AU - Martinez, John
AU - Terem, Itamar
AU - Fabris, Gloria
AU - Pionteck, Aymeric
AU - Yang, Yang
AU - Holdsworth, Samantha J.
AU - Nael, Kambiz
AU - Kurt, Mehmet
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received February 19, 2020; revised June 29, 2020; accepted July 26, 2020. Date of publication July 30, 2020; date of current version November 30, 2020. This work was supported in part by the NSF under Grant CMMI-1728186 and in part by the NIH under Grant 1R21NS111415-01. (Corresponding author: Mehmet Kurt.) Javid Abderezaei, Gloria Fabris, and Aymeric Pionteck are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA (e-mail: jabderez@stevens.edu; gfabris@ stevens.edu; apiontec@stevens.edu).
Publisher Copyright:
© 1982-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - With each heartbeat, periodic variations in arterial blood pressure are transmitted along the vasculature, resulting in localized deformations of the arterial wall and its surrounding tissue. Quantification of such motions may help understand various cerebrovascular conditions, yet it has proven technically challenging thus far. We introduce a new image processing algorithm called amplified Flow (aFlow) which allows to study the coupled brain-blood flow motion by combining the amplification of cine and 4D flow MRI. By incorporating a modal analysis technique known as dynamic mode decomposition into the algorithm, aFlow is able to capture the characteristics of transient events present in the brain and arterial wall deformation. Validating aFlow, we tested it on phantom simulations mimicking arterial walls motion and observed that aFlow displays almost twice higher SNR than its predecessor amplified MRI (aMRI). We then applied aFlow to 4D flow and cine MRI datasets of 5 healthy subjects, finding high correlations between blood flow velocity and tissue deformation in selected brain regions, with correlation values r= 0.61, 0.59, 0.52 for the pons, frontal and occipital lobe (p < 0.001). Finally, we explored the potential diagnostic applicability of aFlow by studying intracranial aneurysm dynamics, which seems to be indicative of rupture risk. In two patients, aFlow successfully visualized the imperceptible aneurysm wall motion, additionally quantifying the increase in the high frequency wall displacement after a one-year follow-up period (20%, 76%). These preliminary data suggest that aFlow may provide a novel imaging biomarker for the assessment of aneurysms evolution, with important potential diagnostic implications.
AB - With each heartbeat, periodic variations in arterial blood pressure are transmitted along the vasculature, resulting in localized deformations of the arterial wall and its surrounding tissue. Quantification of such motions may help understand various cerebrovascular conditions, yet it has proven technically challenging thus far. We introduce a new image processing algorithm called amplified Flow (aFlow) which allows to study the coupled brain-blood flow motion by combining the amplification of cine and 4D flow MRI. By incorporating a modal analysis technique known as dynamic mode decomposition into the algorithm, aFlow is able to capture the characteristics of transient events present in the brain and arterial wall deformation. Validating aFlow, we tested it on phantom simulations mimicking arterial walls motion and observed that aFlow displays almost twice higher SNR than its predecessor amplified MRI (aMRI). We then applied aFlow to 4D flow and cine MRI datasets of 5 healthy subjects, finding high correlations between blood flow velocity and tissue deformation in selected brain regions, with correlation values r= 0.61, 0.59, 0.52 for the pons, frontal and occipital lobe (p < 0.001). Finally, we explored the potential diagnostic applicability of aFlow by studying intracranial aneurysm dynamics, which seems to be indicative of rupture risk. In two patients, aFlow successfully visualized the imperceptible aneurysm wall motion, additionally quantifying the increase in the high frequency wall displacement after a one-year follow-up period (20%, 76%). These preliminary data suggest that aFlow may provide a novel imaging biomarker for the assessment of aneurysms evolution, with important potential diagnostic implications.
KW - 4D flow MRI
KW - Intracranial aneurysm
KW - amplified MRI
KW - aneurysm rupture
KW - cine MRI
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U2 - 10.1109/TMI.2020.3012932
DO - 10.1109/TMI.2020.3012932
M3 - Article
C2 - 32746150
AN - SCOPUS:85097002887
SN - 0278-0062
VL - 39
SP - 4113
EP - 4123
JO - IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
JF - IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
IS - 12
M1 - 9153022
ER -