Analysis of cerebral blood flow from small rodents: Phase contrast angiography of vascular geometry

Abstract

The exact knowledge of the blood vessel geometry plays an important role, not only in clinical applications (stroke diagnosis, detection of stenosis), but also for detailed analysis of functional data, such as fMRI or optical imaging data. Here we focus on validating not only the geometry of the extracted vascular pattern, but also its function, namely the fluid dynamics. For validating angiographic data, phase contrast angiography (PC-MRA) sequences are used, as these data contain additionally to the morphological data rheological information. This rhe-ological information can be used to validate the reconstructed geometric model of the vascular system, especially for the detection of missing vessels due to velocity changes in front of bifurcations.