Table 1.
Demographics and physiological data.
Fig 1.
Data analysis of a 4D Flow MRI dataset.
Fig 1 a) shows contour-placement (white) in the main, right and left pulmonary artery (MPA, RPA, LPA, respectively) in a healthy volunteer. The oblique cutplane transecting the LPA matches the 2D Flow geometric orientation to guarantee the exact comparability of data. Visualization in (a) was achieved by using particle-traces, projected in both flow directions, with contours as seed points. Color-coding was performed with respect to the acquired velocities. (b) the principle of the Conservation of mass-analysis in the same volunteer. Stroke volume in the MPA should equal the sum of stroke volume in the RPA and LPA to proof data consistency. The vessel wall was reconstructed based on complex difference and surface shading of the 4D Flow MRI data.
Table 2.
Comparison of hemodynamic and anatomical parameters between aged-matched, healthy volunteers (VOL-O) and patients with PH (PAT).
Fig 2.
Receiver operating characteristic curves for Amin and Strain measured with 4D and 2D Flow MRI.
The ROC curves illustrate the ability of Amin and Strain to detect patients with PH, characterized by a mean pulmonary artery pressure of > 25 mmHg. AUC = area under the curve.
Table 3.
Comparison of hemodynamic and anatomical values between 2D and 4D Flow MRI in the entire study collective.
Fig 3.
Bland-Altman plots for all evaluated hemodynamic and anatomical parameters for the comparison between 4D Flow and 2D Flow MRI.
The solid line indicates mean bias between techniques, dashed lines indicate limits of agreement (mean bias ± 1.96 standard deviations).
Fig 4.
Scatter plots for all evaluated hemodynamic and anatomical parameters for the comparison between 4D Flow and 2D Flow MRI.
Table 4.
Intraclass correlation coefficients with corresponding 95% confidence intervals for quantitative parameters evaluated with 2D and 4D Flow MRI in the entire study collective.
Fig 5.
Visualization of macroscopic bloodflow in a healthy volunteer and a patient with PH.
The volunteer (a) shows physiological laminar flow without any secondary flow patterns whereas the patient (b) demonstrates a vortex in the MPA, indicating an increased mean pulmonary artery pressure.