Characterizing dysfunction of cerebral perforating arteries in VCID and AD using submillimeter high-resolution MRI

We aim to further develop and optimize high-resolution TOF MRA and PC-MRI at 3T to improve the characterization of the cerebral perforating arteries, i.e., LSA, in terms of the structural delineation and arterial pulsatility measurement and study the contribution of LSA vascular dysfunction to VCID/AD pathology. We hypothesize that the vascular dysfunction of cerebral perforating arteries independently contributes to the pathogenesis of VCID, which could help discriminate the vascular pathology of small vessels from amyloid pathology in mixed VCID/AD. To this end, three specific aims are proposed as follows:Aim 1: To optimize and evaluate high-resolution TOF MRA and PC-MRI techniques for the quantitative characterization of vascular morphology and arterial pulsatility of LSA, respectively. Aim2: To study the dysfunction of LSA in the pathogenesis of VCID/AD using optimized high-resolution TOF MRA and PC-MRI.