Huijun Chen1,
Pathmaja Paramsothy2, Alice Dowdy2, Arthi Thirumalai2,
Sarah Prager2, Xihai Zhao1, Xue-Qiao Zhao2,
Edward Gill2, William Kerwin2
1Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China; 2University of Washington, Seattle,
WA, United States
The metabolic syndrome (MetS), a manifestation of insulin resistance, is associated with independent increased risk of CVD. One of the early manifestations of MetS on the arterial wall is endothelial dysfunction, which may lead to altered contrast agent kinetics in DCE MRI. Because of the small size of the vessel wall early in the atherosclerosis, blood suppressed DCE protocols are required, precluding extraction of the AIF for kinetic modeling. In this study, we sought to test the ability of black-blood DCE-MRI plus reference region model to study contrast agent kinetics in MetS patients drawn from a population of premenopausal women.