The impact of 4D flow displacement artifacts on wall shear stress estimation

Purpose: To investigate the amplitude and spatial distribution of errors in wall shear stress (WSS) values derived from 4D flow measurements caused by displacement artifacts intrinsic to the 4D flow acquisition.

Methods: Phase-contrast MRI velocimetry was performed in a model of a stenotic aorta using two different timing schemes, both of which are commonly applied in vivo but differ in their resulting displacement artifacts. Whereas one scheme is optimized to minimize the duration of the encoding gradients (herein called FAST), the other aims to specifically minimize displacement artifacts by synchronizing all three spatial-encoding time points (called ECHO). WSS estimates were calculated and compared to unbiased WSS values obtained by a 5-hour single-point imaging acquisition. In addition, MRI simulations based on computational fluid dynamics data were carried out to investigate the impact of gradient timings corresponding to different spatial resolutions.

Results: 4D flow displacement artifacts were found to have an impact on the quantified WSS peak values, spatial location, and overall WSS pattern. FAST leads to the underestimation of local WSS values in the phantom arch by up to 90%. Moreover, the corresponding WSS estimates depend on the image orientation. This effect was avoided using ECHO, which, however, results in biased WSS values within the stenosis, yielding an underestimation of peak WSS by up to 17%. Computational fluid dynamics-based simulation results show that the bias in WSS due to displacement artifacts increases with increasing spatial resolution, thus counteracting the resolution benefit for WSS due to reduced partial volume effects and segmentation errors.

Conclusions: 4D flow displacement artifacts can significantly impact the WSS estimates and depend on the timing scheme as well as potentially the image orientation. Whereas FAST might allow correct WSS estimation for lower resolutions, ECHO is recommended especially when spatial resolutions of 1 mm and smaller are used. Users need to be aware of this nonnegligible effect, particularly when conducting inter-site studies or studies between vendors. The timing scheme should thus be explicitly mentioned in publications.