• Nan Wang, Anthony G Christodoulou, Yibin Xie, Zhenjia Wang, Zixin Deng, Bill Zhou, Sangeun Lee, Zhaoyang Fan, Hyukjae Chang, Wei Yu, and Debiao Li.
• Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California.
• Magn Reson Med. 2019 Apr 1; 81 (4): 2302-2314.

PurposeTo develop a dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI method capable of high spatiotemporal resolution, 3D carotid coverage, and T1-based quantification of contrast agent concentration for the assessment of carotid atherosclerosis using a newly developed Multitasking technique.Methods5D imaging with 3 spatial dimensions, 1 T1 recovery dimension, and 1 DCE time dimension was performed using MR Multitasking based on low-rank tensor modeling, which allows direct T1 quantification with high spatiotemporal resolution (0.7 mm isotropic and 595 ms, respectively). Saturation recovery preparations followed by 3D segmented fast low angle shot readouts were implemented with Gaussian-density random 3D Cartesian sampling. A bulk motion removal scheme was developed to improve image quality. The proposed protocol was tested in phantom and human studies. In vivo scans were performed on 14 healthy subjects and 7 patients with carotid atherosclerosis. Kinetic parameters including area under the concentration versus time curve (AUC), vp , Ktrans , and ve were evaluated for each case.ResultsPhantom experiments showed that T1 measurements using the proposed protocol were in good agreement with reference value ( R 2 = 0.96 ). In vivo studies demonstrated that AUC, vp , and Ktrans in the patient group were significantly higher than in the control group (0.63 ± 0.13 versus 0.42 ± 0.12, P < 0.001; 0.14 ± 0.05 versus 0.11 ± 0.03, P = 0.034; and 0.13 ± 0.04 versus 0.08 ± 0.02, P < 0.001, respectively). Results from repeated subjects showed good interscan reproducibility (intraclass correlation coefficient: vp , 0.83; Ktrans , 0.87; ve , 0.92; AUC, 0.94).ConclusionMultitasking DCE is a promising approach for quantitatively assessing the vascularity properties of the carotid vessel wall.© 2018 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

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