Wall motion estimation in intracranial aneurysms

The quantification of wall motion in cerebral aneurysms is becoming important owing to its potential connection to rupture, and as a way to incorporate the effects of vascular compliance in computational fluid dynamics simulations. Most of papers report values obtained with experimental phantoms, simulated images or animal models, but the information for real patients is limited. In this paper, we have combined non-rigid registration with signal processing techniques to measure pulsation in real patients from high frame rate digital subtraction angiography. We have obtained physiological meaningful waveforms with amplitudes in the range 0 mm-0.3 mm for a population of 18 patients including ruptured and unruptured aneurysms. Statistically significant differences in pulsation were found according to the rupture status, in agreement with differences in biomechanical properties reported in the literature.