Simultaneous intracranial angiography and intraplaque hemorrhage imaging using SNAP

Background Intracranial atherosclerotic disease (IAD) accounts for 9-15% of all stroke incidents in the US [1], and the ratio is even higher in some racial groups [2]. Although angiography based imaging remains the prevalent diagnostic tool for IAD detection, it’s unable to detect high risk lesions via direct visualization of the vessel wall. Lesions with intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH) on the carotid arteries have been associated with significantly increased clinical symptoms and plaque progress. An imaging tool that can detect both the luminal stenosis and high risk vessel wall disease is of clinical importance for IAD patient management. In this study, the recently proposed SNAP [3] technique was particularly optimized to simultaneously detect luminal stenosis and IPH for IAD patients.