Dempsey Sergio, Safaei Soroush, Holdsworth Samantha J, Maso Talou Gonzalo D
Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland, 70 Symonds Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.
Mātai Medical Research Institute, 466 Childers Road, Gisborne 4010, New Zealand.
Interface Focus. 2025 Apr 4;15(1):20240036. doi: 10.1098/rsfs.2024.0036.
Intracranial pulse wave velocity (PWV) offers the potential to enhance neurovascular care when evaluating cerebrovascular disease. Using 4D flow MRI, we measured PWV in the intracranial vasculature stemming from the internal carotids and basilar arteries using three popular techniques: cross-correlation, waveform optimization and time-to-upstroke which have all been used intracranially, but never compared. Near-perfect agreement between cross-correlation and waveform optimization methods was observed, while the time-to-upstroke method estimated a significantly larger PWV and was more prone to non-physiological values in a cohort of 21 healthy individuals aged 48 ± 18 years. We then analysed our cohort PWV using an ensemble approach given the current lack of methodological consensus. This analysis identified two consistent findings. First, internal carotids measure significantly higher PWV than basilar vascular networks (3.64 ± 1.47 versus 2.53 ± 1.39 m s). Second, in our cohort, intracranial PWV was age-independent. We hypothesize that age independence is a healthy physiological trait to minimize microvascular strain, protecting the integrity of the peripheral bed throughout ageing and cardiac pulsatile deformation. The cause for apparent age independence remains unknown. We also identified that previous work on intracranial PWV is likely biased towards the extracranial vasculature, which may explain the study differences in PWV magnitude and the age-dependent nature.
颅内脉搏波速度（PWV）在评估脑血管疾病时为加强神经血管护理提供了可能。我们使用4D流动磁共振成像（MRI），采用三种常用技术测量了源自颈内动脉和基底动脉的颅内血管系统中的PWV，这三种技术分别是互相关技术、波形优化技术和上升时间技术，这些技术均已在颅内使用过，但从未进行过比较。在21名年龄为48±18岁的健康个体中，观察到互相关技术和波形优化技术之间的一致性近乎完美，而上升时间技术估计的PWV显著更大，且更易出现非生理值。鉴于目前缺乏方法学上的共识，我们随后采用综合方法分析了我们队列的PWV。该分析确定了两个一致的结果。第一，颈内动脉测量的PWV显著高于基底血管网络（3.64±1.47对2.53±1.39米/秒）。第二，在我们的队列中，颅内PWV与年龄无关。我们推测年龄无关性是一种健康的生理特征，可将微血管应变降至最低，在整个衰老过程和心脏搏动变形过程中保护外周床的完整性。明显的年龄无关性的原因尚不清楚。我们还发现，先前关于颅内PWV的研究可能偏向于颅外血管系统，这可能解释了PWV大小的研究差异以及年龄依赖性的本质。
