摘要：Quantitative data on the morphology of the cerebral arterial tree could aid in modelling and understanding cerebrovascular diseases, but is scarce in the range between 200 micrometres and 1 mm diameter arteries. Traditional manual measurements are difficult and time consuming. 7T-MRI and 9.4T-MRI of human cerebral arterial plastic casts could proof feasible for acquiring detailed morphological data of the cerebral arterial tree in a time efficient method. One cast of the complete human cerebral arterial circulation embedded in gadolinium-containing gelatine gel was scanned at 7T-MRI (0.1 mm isotropic resolution). A small section of another cast was scanned at 9.4T-MRI (30 µm isotropic resolution). Subsequent 3D-reconstruction was performed using a semi-automatic approach. Validation of 7T-MRI was performed by comparing the radius calculated using MRI to manual measurements on the same cast. As manual measurement of the small section was not feasible, 9.4T-MRI was validated by scanning the small section both at 7T-MRI and 9.4T MRI and comparing the diameters of arterial segments. Linear regression slopes were 0.97 (R-squared 0.94) and 1.0 (R-squared 0.90) for 7T-MRI and 9.4T-MRI. This data shows that 7T-MRI and 9.4T-MRI and subsequent 3D reconstruction of plastic casts is feasible, and allows for characterization of human cerebral arterial tree morphology.
