Correlation of Black Blood MRI with Image- Based Blood Flow Simulations in Intracranial Aneurysms

Abstract

Intracranial aneurysms (IA) is not-uncommon pathology of cerebral vessels. Vessel wall magnetic resonance imaging can visualize the vascular walls of IAs. In some aneurysms, the wall-adjacent and a luminal hyperintense signal was detected. The signal was attributed to the inflammation and specific hemodynamic features of aneurysms. But, up to now, the studies investigating luminal enhancement combined with flow analysis are limited. Therefore, in this study, investigation of the luminal enhancement is further carried out by comparison to computational fluid dynamics. The latter provides the possibility of calculating hemodynamic parameters, which can give information such as velocity, pressure, and shear stress fields throughout a heart cycle. The data of the IAs is specific to each patient and builds the basis for the enhancement analysis and simulations. Specific hemodynamic parameters like kinetic energy and vortex formation evaluated in the simulations show a dependency to signal suppression recorded with vessel wall magnetic resonance imaging

Keywords

• computational fluid dynamics
• black blood magnetic resonance imaging
• hemodynamics
• intracranial aneurysm