Intracranial vessel wall imaging
Purpose of review
To give an overview regarding the potential usefulness of vessel wall imaging (VWI) in distinguishing various intracranial vascular diseases, their common imaging features, and potential pitfalls.
Recent findings
VWI provides direct visualization of the vessel wall and allows the discrimination of different diseases such as vasculitis, atherosclerosis, dissection, Moyamoya disease, and reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome. Recent studies showed that concentric and eccentric involvement in the vessel wall, as well as the enhancement pattern were found important for the distinguishing these diseases and evaluating their activity.
Summary
Most of the imaging techniques currently used are based on luminal imaging. However, these imaging methods are not adequate to distinguish different diseases that can demonstrate similar radiological findings. VWI is being increasingly used as a noninvasive imaging method to offset this limitation.
Source: Current Opinion in Rheumatology - Category: Rheumatology Tags: VASCULITIS SYNDROMES: Edited by Hasan Yazici and Yusuf Yazici Source Type: research