Abstract:

Objective: To assess the performance and clinical significance of head MSCT angiography（MSCTA） in displaying occipital artery（OA）. Methods: The primeval MSCTA imaging data of 80 cases were processed with three reconstruction methods respectively,including shade volume rendering（SVR）, maximal intensity projection（MIP）and curved plannar reconstruction（CPR）, and the diameters of OA at origin and of occipital artery groove at the midpoint were measured. The quality of images derived from the three reconstruction methods were evaluated. Results: The left OA diameter was (2.33±0.26) mm at the origin, and (2.30±0.24) mm at the midpoint of occipital artery groove. The right OA diameter was (2.28±0.24) mm at the origin, and (2.30±0.25) mm at the midpoint of occipital artery groove. The quality of image constructed by SVR and MIP showed no significant difference (t=1.91, P>0.05), however, SVR and MIP yielded image with higher quality than CPR（t=10.70, t=-10.03, P<0.01）. Conclusions: Both SVR and MIP assist visualization of the anatomic structure of OA in head MSCTA.

Key words: Occipital artery, Multi-slice spiral CT angiography, Diagnosis