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Efficient Method of Mapping Sources of Abnormal Routes of Vascular Circulation Regardless of Their Location Using MRI

Technology Benefits

The method detects and identifies sources of abnormal (collateral) routes of circulation regardless of their location, providing the clinician with important information for patient management. In clinical applications, the locations of some of the feeding arteries is typically known, but when there is vascular disease, which is the primary application of this class of imaging methods, there are often collateral routes of circulation that develop to perfuse the affected tissues. These collateral sources are often difficult to identify a priori. The use of unipolar rather than bipolar vessel encoding gradient lobes results in nearly complete insensitivity to resonance offsets at the tagging plane, a feature that the original VEASL did not have, and it also provides a means for measuring the frequency offsets themselves.

Technology Application

Diagnostic imaging in strokeImage based guidance for intra-arterial treatment of strokeRisk assessment for strokeEvaluation of blood supply to tumorsEvaluation of blood supply to organ transplants, such as kidneysEvaluation of collateral blood supply in carotid or other cerebrovascular disease

Detailed Technology Description

UC San Diego researchers have developed an efficient method for estimating both the location and resonance offset of all feeding arteries of VEASL from randomly encoded data, allowing for identification of source vessels without prior knowledge of their locations. The method uses unipolar rather than bipolar vessel encoding gradient lobes providing the same encoding functionality, which results in nearly complete insensitivity to resonance offsets at the tagging plane.

Industry

Biomedical

Sub Category

Medical Imaging

Application No.

8195274

Others

State Of Development

A working software on a GE MRI scanner has been developed and can be adapted to other MRI scanners. Experimental data collected in human subjects, demonstrating successful identification of feeding arteries without prior knowledge of their locations.

Related Materials

Guo J, Wong EC, Blind Detection of Source Vessel Locations and Resonance Offsets Using Randomly Encoded VEASL, 2011 ISMRM 19th Annual Meeting Abstract#294.

Tech ID/UC Case

22018/2011-314-0

Related Cases

2011-314-0, 2007-238-0

*Abstract

In conventional vessel encoded ASL (VEASL), pseudo-continuous ASL tagging is used with additional gradient pulses applied across the tagging plane to encode the data with information about the location of the feeding arteries. In most implementations, prior information on the locations of feeding arteries in the tagging plane has been used to optimize the encoding process. However, in some cases, the relevant supplying arteries are not known ahead of time, as there may be variant or collateral circulation. In addition, the resonance offset in the tagging plane is known to affect the tagging efficiency.

*IP Issue Date

Jun 5, 2012

*Principal Investigator

Name: Jia Guo

Department:

Name: Eric Wong

Department:

Name: Eric Wong

Department:

Country/Region

USA