Date of Award
2008
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Program
Anatomy and Cell Biology
Supervisor
Kem Rogers
Second Advisor
Brian Rutt
Abstract
High-resolution MRI of the aortic arch is hindered by artifacts caused by pulsatile and translational motion. The following study aims to characterize vessel wall motion in the aortic arch in a cholesterol-fed rabbit model of atherosclerosis, and to test the efficacy of cardiac gating and cardiorespiratory gating for high-resolution vessel wall imaging of the aortic arch. Cine imaging sequences of the aortic arch were obtained through the cardiac and respiratory cycles using a bright-blood fSPGR sequence, and used to evaluate aortic motion. With this data, high-resolution, black-blood spin-echo images were acquired at three different locations in the aortic arch at various cardiac gating windows. High- resolution image data demonstrates that cardiac gating windows in late systole produce images with better flow suppression, less motion artifact and better overall image quality than gating windows in early to mid diastole. This is in spite of gating window simulations that predicted least aortic motion in mid-diastole. It was also shown that supplemental respiratory gating does not significantly improve image quality over regular cardiac gating. These results suggest that cardiac gating in late systole is more resilient against cardiac-related motion artifacts than gating in diastole.
Recommended Citation
Nabeta, David, "Motion Correction for High-Resolution MR Imaging of the Aortic Arch of a Rabbit" (2008). Digitized Theses. 4871.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4871