Clinical Significance Of Circle Of Willis Detected By Black-blood MRI In Stroke

Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the atherosclerosis and integrity of circle of Willis detected by black-blood MRI in stroke.Methods: After written informed consent was obtained,62 patients with recent ischemic stroke or TIA(within 3 months)were recruited.Another 49 asymptomatic subjects with matched sex and age were enrolled as control group.All subjects were scanned on a Philips 3.0T scanner with SNAP,TOF and VISTA sequences.All post-processing and review were done using a Philips workstation.Then,blind to the patient information,an experienced radiologist reviewed the images on a Philips workstation.Results: In evaluating the constituent vessels of CoW,SNAP showed a good agreement with TOF.The agreement in evaluating ACoA was lower,but still acceptable.The performance of SNAP is also consistent with VISTA in assessing Co W plaques.In symptom group and control group,no significant was found between two groups(P>0.05)in four types of CoW.In symptom group,patients with type I CoW were significantly younger than the patients with type II and type IV CoW(P<0.05).The number of plaques in the CoW was significantly different between the two groups,and the plaques in symptom group were significantly more than those in the control group(P<0.05).Conclusions: SNAP has good ability in evaluating the integrity of CoW,and potential in assessing the Co W plaques.There was no significant difference between ischemic stroke patients and asymptomatic controls inCoW integrity.The number of plaques in the CoW is associated with the occurrence of stroke symptoms.