Neurovascular disease is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide and is the number one cause of adult disability. Dr. Fan’s lab has been focused on the development of 3D multi-contrast-weighting MR techniques for better diagnosis or risk stratification of various neurovascular diseases. Representative achievements are:
We developed a multi-contrast atherosclerosis characterization (MATCH) technique (United States Patent US9554727B2) that represents the first 3D method allowing for comprehensive carotid atherosclerotic plaque composition assessment in 5 minutes. This dramatically mitigates the limitations (such as inter-scan misalignment, suboptimal tissue contrast, lengthy exam duration) associated with conventional MR carotid plaque imaging techniques, thus potentially fostering clinical adoption of MR in guiding management of carotid atherosclerotic disease. Dr. Fan has served as a co-author in the White Paper on carotid vessel wall imaging from the American Society of Neuroradiology.
We recently developed a cerebrospinal fluid-suppressed whole-brain vessel wall imaging technique that allows for non-invasive characterization of intracranial vessel wall with superior spatial resolution and image contrast. Dr. Fan is one of multiple Principal Investigators leading a multi-center registry (“WISP”, ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02923752) to evaluate the technique’s clinical utility in stroke etiology determination.
Dr. Fan was awarded by NIH/NHLBI in 2019 an R01 grant to develop a longitudinal and quantitative MR plaque imaging technique for treatment response evaluation in symptomatic intracranial atherosclerosis.
Representative Publications
- Fan Z, Yu W, Xie Y, Dong L, Yang L, Wang Z, Conte A.H., Bi X, An J, Zhang T, Laub G, Shah P.K., Zhang Z, Li D. Multi-contrast atherosclerosis characterization (MATCH) of carotid plaque with a single 5-min scan: technical development and clinical feasibility. Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 2014;16:53.
- Fan Z, Yang Q, Deng Z, Li Y, Bi X, Song S, Li D. Whole-brain intracranial vessel wall imaging at 3 Tesla using cerebrospinal fluid-attenuated T1-weighted 3D turbo spin echo. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 2017 Mar;77(3):1142-1150.
- Wu F, Song H, Ma Q, Xiao J, Jiang T, Huang X, Bi X, Guo X, Li D, Yang Q, Ji X, Fan Z. Hyperintense plaque on intracranial vessel wall magnetic resonance imaging as a predictor of artery-to-artery embolic infarction. Stroke 2018;49:905-911.
- Saba J, Yuan C, Hatsukami TS, Balu N, Qiao Y, DeMarco JK, Saam T, Moody AR, Li D, Matouk CC, Johnson MH, Jager HR, Mossa-Basha M, Kooi ME, Fan Z, Saloner D, Wintermark M, Mikulis DJ, Wasserman BA. Carotid artery wall imaging: perspective and guidelines from the ASNR vessel wall imaging study group and expert consensus recommendations of the American Society of Neuroradiology. American Journal of Neuroradiology 2018;39:E9-E31.
- Shi F, Yang Q, Guo X, Qureshi T, Tian Z, Miao H, Dey D, Li D, Fan Z. Vessel wall segmentation using convolutional neural networks. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 2019;66:2840-2847.