Measuring Arterial Tortuosity in the Cerebrovascular System
Author Information
Author(s): Pan Yiyan, Kahru Kevin, Barinas-Mitchell Emma, Ibrahim Tamer S., Andreescu Carmen, Karim Helmet
Primary Institution: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Hypothesis
Can an open-source pipeline accurately measure arterial tortuosity in the cerebrovascular system using Time-of-Flight MRI?
Conclusion
The study successfully developed a method to measure arterial tortuosity that correlates with age and carotid artery thickness.
Supporting Evidence
- Our metrics can capture tortuosity even under heightened noise constraints.
- Our method can discriminate different types of abnormal arterial coiling.
- ICA tortuosity measures correlate positively with age.
- ICA tortuosity measures correlate with ultrasound measured carotid artery intima media thickness.
Takeaway
The researchers created a new way to measure how twisted blood vessels are in the brain, which can help doctors understand brain health better.
Methodology
An open-source pipeline using unit-speed spline fitting for curvature estimation was tested with theoretical data and applied to Time-of-Flight MRI data.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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