Synopsis
Understanding Baseline: Arterial Compliance.
Target Audience
Researchers and clinicians interested in
understanding the concept and measurement of cerebral arterial compliance.
Objectives
·
To understand the concept of
cerebral arterial compliance.
·
To learn which techniques exist
to measure cerebral arterial compliance.
Purpose
Compliance of cerebral arteries accommodates
pulsatile blood flow originating from the heart, as it dampens out these
pulsations to continuous blood flow in the capillary bed of the brain ensuring
optimal exchange of nutrients and metabolites. Stiffening of cerebral arteries,
i.e. a decrease in arterial compliance (AC), leads to pulsatile blood flow
through the capillaries which can damage the vessel walls and lead to small vessel
disease (SVD). Methods
I will give an overview of the MRI
techniques that exist to measure cerebral AC1–3. These techniques are based on the early time points after
labelling protons in the blood in arterial spin labelling. At these time points
the signal of the inverted protons still resides in the arteries, before it is
perfusing brain tissue. Gating of ASL image acquisition is done to assure the
measurement of arterial blood volume in systole and in diastole. Results
The measurement of cerebral AC has been
used to probe the relationship of arterial stiffening with healthy aging3, as well as probing cerebrovascular physiology in healthy young
volunteers4. Discussion
In this section I will compare the current
techniques for measurement of AC, discussing their pros and cons
Additionally potential future applications
will be discussed. This includes the use of cerebral AC as a biomarker for
vascular cognitive decline. Acknowledgements
No acknowledgement found.References
1. Warnert, E.
A. H., Murphy, K., Hall, J. E. & Wise, R. G. Noninvasive assessment of
arterial compliance of human cerebral arteries with short inversion time
arterial spin labeling. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 35, 461–468
(2015).
2. Warnert, E.
A. H., Verbree, J., Wise, R. G. & Van Osch, M. J. P. Using high-field
magnetic resonance imaging to estimate distensibility of the middle cerebral
artery. Neurodegener. Dis. 16, (2016).
3. Yan, L.,
Liu, C. Y., Smith, R. X., Jog, M., Langham, M., Krasileva, K., Chen, Y.,
Ringman, J. M. & Wang, D. J. J. Assessing intracranial vascular compliance
using dynamic arterial spin labeling. Neuroimage 124, 433–441
(2015).
4. Warnert, E.
A. H., Hart, E. C., Murphy, K., Hall, J. E. & Wise, R. G. The major
cerebral arteries proximal to the Circle of Willis contribute to
cerebrovascular resistance in humans. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. Article
in, 1–12 (2015).