Diagnostic value of T1WI 3D volumetric isotropic TSE acquisition in middle cerebral artery stenosis

Abstract:

Objective：To evaluate the diagnostic value of T1-weighted 3D-volumetric isotropic TSE acquisition（T1WI 3D-VISTA） in middle cerebral artery（MCA） stenosis. Methods：The time of flight magnetic resonance angiography（TOF-MRA） and T1WI 3D-VISTA images of 33 patients who were proved have MCA stenosis by digital subtraction angiography（DSA） from May 2016 to July 2017 were retrospectively analyzed. The images were estimated by two experienced radiologists to score the image quality of T1WI 3D-VISTA and measure the vascular stenosis rate blindly. SPSS 17.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Randomized blocks of variance and LSD-t test were used for analyzing the stenosis rate of T1WI 3D-VISTA，TOF-MRA and DSA. The consistency between T1WI 3D-VISTA and DSA with TOF-MRA and DSA was compared and the sensitivity，specificity and other parameters of T1WI 3D-VISTA was calculated using DSA as the gold standard. Results：Totally 37 arteries were diagnosed with varying degrees of steno－sis or occlusion. The mean stenosis rates of T1WI 3D-VISTA，TOF-MRA and DSA were （63.189±16.050）%，（66.014±15.395）% and （61.351±16.366）% respectively，with statistically significant difference（F=5.443，P=0.006）. There was no significant difference between T1WI 3D-VISTA and TOF-MRA（P=0.050），between T1WI 3D-VISTA and DSA（P=0.200），while the stenosis rates of TOF-MRA was significantly higher than that of DSA（P=0.001）. A good consistency between T1WI 3D-VISTA and DSA（?资=0.874，P=0.000） while a middle consistency between TOF-MRA and DSA（?资=0.593，P=0.000） was observed. Conclusion：The T1WI 3D-VISTA technique has a good consistency with DSA in diagnosing MCA stenosis，and it has a good diagnostic value for MCA stenosis.