New MRI Techniques for Diagnosis and Treatment of Patients With Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms

An abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a pathological dilatation of the aorta in the belly which can rupture leading to bleeding within the belly. To prevent rupture elective surgery can be performed. Endovascular repair (EVAR) is a surgical intervention whereby a stent is inserted into the AAA to prevent it from further growth and rupture. Standard AAA management has several drawbacks. To start: maximum AAA diameter is used to determine upon timing of elective repair but is imprecise in predicting the risk of rupture resulting in an unmet clinical need. Secondly, EVAR outcome and complication occurrence remain unpredictable due to poor prediction ability of computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound (US) utilised in the follow-up protocol. Lastly, patients and physicians are being repeatedly exposed to cumulative radiation toxicity. All these drawbacks could be solved by trading the standard imaging modalities by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Within the MARVY, advanced MRI techniques are used to find out if standard imaging techniques could be replaced by MRI in three phases of the AAA management (surveillance, surgery planning and post-operative follow-up). The two most important MRI techniques that will be used are 4D flow MRI and dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI which give respectively information about the blood flow within the AAA and perfusion of the aortic wall.