• Ming-Li Li, Yu-Yuan Xu, Bo Hou, Zhao-Yong Sun, Hai-Long Zhou, Zheng-Yu Jin, Feng Feng, and Wei-Hai Xu.
• Department of Radiology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China. Electronic address: limingli@pumch.cn.
• Eur J Radiol. 2016 Apr 1; 85 (4): 803-7.

PurposeTo evaluate the feasibility of high-resolution 3D CUBE T1WI for intracranial vessel wall imaging.MethodsHigh-resolution 3D CUBE T1 weighted intracranial vessel wall images (0.4 mm × 0.4 mm × 0.4 mm) of 50 patients were retrospectively evaluated. A 5-point scale (1 poor, 5 excellent) was used to score the imaging quality for displaying the vessel wall of every intracranial artery segments. The inter-observer and intra-observer reproducibility of identifying plaques, intraplaque hemorrhage/luminal thrombosis, and wall enhancement were calculated.ResultsTotally 893 artery segments were evaluated. 3D CUBE T1WI displayed the arteries wall and lumen clearly, with the highest score (4.920 ± 0.837) for the C6-7 segments and the lowest (3.370 ± 1.107) for the C3 segments of the internal carotid artery (ICA). Both intra-observer and inter-observer reproducibility were high for identification of normal walls (κ=0.928, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.891-0.954; κ=0.911, CI 0.868-0.940), plaque (κ=0.924, CI 0.884-0.954; κ=0.907, CI 0.866-0.943), luminal thrombosis (κ=1.000, CI 1.000-1.000; κ=1.000, CI 1.000-1.000), and wall enhancement (κ=1.000, CI 1.000-1.000; κ=0.914, CI 0.863-0.961).ConclusionsHigh-resolution 3D CUBE T1WI displayed intracranial wall and lumen clearly, and detected intracranial artery abnormalities with high reproducibility.Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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