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Investigates the magnetic resonance features of meningeal carcinomatosis. Diagnosis of the disease by the history of malignant tumors; Retrospective analysis of the types of meningeal involvement; Occurrence of abnormal pial enhancement on cortical surfaces of cerebellum, brainstem and cerebrum.

Objective: To assess the value of high-resolution three-dimensional black-blood magnetic resonance imaging (3D-BB-MRI) in quantitative measurement of carotid atherosclerotic plaque by comparison with two-dimensional black-blood magnetic resonance imaging (2D-BB-MRI)., Methods: Forty patients were scanned with routine 2D and oblique-sagittal 3D-BB-MRI. The original oblique-sagittal 3D images were reformatted to an axial 2D-like dataset. Two experienced radiologists identified the interested slice in consensus for every patient (unilateral carotid artery) in 2D-BB-MRI images and matched the axial reformatted 3D images with 2D black-blood images. Plaque thickness (PT), lumen area (LA) and total vessel area (TVA) were measured, and lumen stenosis (LS) and normalized wall index (NWI) were calculated., Results: There was no measurement difference between 2D-BB-MRI and reformatted 3D-BB-MRI (P>0.05), and these two methods had a good correlation (r<0.9). The Bland-Altman chart showed that 2D-BB-MRI and 3D-BB-MRI were in good agreement in the measurement of PT, LA and TVA., Conclusion: 3D-BB-MRI and 2D-BB-MRI have no obvious difference in quantitative measurement of the carotid plaques. 3D-BB-MRI can demonstrate the vessels and plaques by multiplanar reconstruction and thus have better performance in evaluating carotid atherosclerosis compared with 2D-BB-MRI.

Objective: To reduce the acquisition time of carotid high-resolution contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (CEMRI), we designed a small field-of-view (FOV) quadruple-inversion-recovery (SF-QIR) T1WI and evaluated the image quality., Methods: Twenty-four subjects with carotid plaque were enrolled in our study. All the subjects were imaged using the same 3.0T MRI by SF-QIR and standard rectangular FOV QIR (SrF-QIR) with identical parameters except for the phase-encoding step numbers and the RF excitation methods. Three independent readers qualitatively evaluated the differences between the two sequences in regard of the carotid outer wall border delineation, fibrous cap and lipid-rich necrotic core (LR-NC) border delineation, and diagnostic confidence. The quantitative measurements included maximal stenosis, wall area, LR-NC area, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). The inter-reader variability was assessed., Results: The application of SF-QIR combined with orthogonal radio frequency excitation resulted in nearly half of the scan time with the SrF-QIR. Both qualitative and quantitative assessment by the readers revealed no significant differences between the two sequences except for SNR and CNR (Pgt;0.05). Since the mean loss of SNR with SF-QIR was 37.7%, SrF-QIR demonstrated a superior performance in SNR (P<0.001)., Conclusion: The small FOV QIR sequence is effective in high-resolution CEMRI for evaluating carotid plaques and can effectively reduce the scan time and eliminate motion artifacts.