Feasibility of Measuring Magnetic Resonance Elastography-derived Stiffness in Human Thoracic Aorta and Aortic Dissection Phantoms

Type-B aortic dissection (TBAD) represents a serious medical emergency with up to a 50% associated 5-year mortality caused by thoracic aorta, dissection-associated aneurysmal (DAA) degeneration, and rupture. Unfortunately, conventional size related diagnostic methods cannot distinguish high-risk DAAs that benefit from surgical intervention from stable DAAs. Our goal is to use DAA stiffness measured with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) as a biomarker to distinguish high-risk DAAs from stable DAAs. This is a feasibility study using MRE to 1) fabricate human-like geometries TBAD phantoms with different stiffnesses. 2) measure stiffness in TBAD phantoms with rheometry and 3) demonstrate the first successful application of MRE to the thoracic aorta of a human volunteer. Aortic dissection phantoms with heterogenous wall stiffness demonstrated the correlation between MRE-derived stiffness and rheometric measured stiffness. A pilot scan was performed in a healthy volunteer to test the technique's feasibility in the thoracic aorta.