High-resolution compressed-sensing time-of-flight MRA in a case of acute ICA/MCA dissection

Acute, isolated intracranial dissection (ICD) represents a rare and challenging cause of acute stroke. DSA is considered to be the gold standard imaging modality in patients with ICD. The role of novel, high-resolution (HR) compressed-sensing (CS) time-of-flight (TOF) MRA techniques in ICDs is unclear. A 22-year-old male patient with an isolated right ICA/MCA intracranial dissection underwent "conventional" 3-T TOF MRA, HR CS TOF MRA and also DSA including digital rotational angiography. Unlike the "conventional" TOF MRA, HR CS TOF MRA provided comparable image quality to rotational angiography and a dissection membrane was clearly visible in both techniques. In this single case study, we demonstrated the feasibility of a novel HR CS TOF in a case of an acute isolated intracranial ICA/MCA dissection, which needs to be validated in a larger case series.