Reproducibility of flow and wall shear stress analysis using flow‐sensitive four‐dimensional MRI

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Abstract
Purpose: To systematically investigate the scan–rescan reproducibility and observer variability of flow‐sensitive four‐dimensional (4D) MRI in the aorta for the assessment of blood flow and global and segmental wall shear stress.Materials and Methods: ECG and respiration‐synchronized flow‐sensitive 4D MRI data (spatio‐temporal resolution = 1.7 × 2.0 × 2.2 mm3/40.8 ms) were acquired in 12 healthy volunteers. To analyze scan–rescan variability, flow‐sensitive 4D MRI was repeated in 10 volunteers during a second visit. Data analysis included calculation of time‐resolved and total flow, peak systolic velocity, and regional and global wall shear stress (WSS) in up to 24 analysis planes distributed along the aorta.Results: Scan–rescan, inter‐observer, and intra‐observer agreement was excellent for the calculation of total flow and peak systolic velocity (mean differences P < 0.001) for different observers and examinations.Conclusion: Flow‐sensitive 4D MRI‐based analysis of aortic blood flow can be performed with good reproducibility. Robustness of global and regional WSS quantification was limited, but spatio‐temporal WSS distributions could reliably be replicated. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2011;33:988–994.

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