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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Atherosclerosis. 2014 Oct 17;237(2):460–463. doi: 10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2014.10.007

Figure 1. Imaging of symptomatic left intracranial internal carotid (ICA) plaque.

Figure 1

A: Brain MRI diffusion-weighted sequences demonstrate acute watershed pattern infarctions.

B: CT angiogram of the left ICA (oblique maximum-intensity projection) shows stenosis (arrow) along with wall calcification (orange star).

C-E: 3T HRMRI of the left ICA, cross-sectional images of stenosis (top row unmarked, bottom row with plaque components marked and vessel wall and lumen outlined): Panel C) T1-weighted image; Panel D) T2-weighted image; and Panel E) FLAIR image. Images demonstrate signal characteristics consistent with pathologically-verified extracranial carotid plaque1 as follows: lipid and loose matrix appears isointense on T1- and hypo- to isointense on T2-weighted images (yellow outline), fibrous tissue appears isointense on T1- and T2-weighted images (green outline), and calcification appears dark on T1- and T2-weighted images (orange star). Intraplaque hemorrhage, which appears hyperintense on T1-weighted images, is not visualized. Post-contrast images were degraded by motion and are not shown.