摘要
Objective: To investigate flow-related parameters in pulmonary arteries of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Materials and methods: Eleven PAH patients and twelve control participants were recruited. PAH and controls had similar age and gender distribution. 2D phase-contrast MRI (PC-MRI) was performed in the main, right, and left pulmonary artery (MPA, RPA, and LPA). The flow velocity, wall shear stress (WSS), and oscillatory shear index (OSI) were measured. Results: PAH patients displayed prolonged acceleration time (T ) and increased ratio of flow change to acceleration volume in pulmonary arteries (both P < 0.001). The temporally averaged WSS values of MPA, RPA, and LPA in PAH patients were significantly lower than those of control participants (P < 0.001). The OSI in the pulmonary arteries was higher in PAH patients than control participants (P < 0.05). The ROC analysis indicated the ratio of maximum flow change to acceleration volume, WSS, and T exhibited sufficient sensitivity and specificity to detect patients with PAH. The WSS demonstrated strong correlations with T and the ratio value in the two groups (R = 0.78–0.96). Conclusions: We used a clinically feasible 2D PC-MRI sequence with a reasonable scanning time to compute aforementioned indices. The quantitative parameters provided sufficient information to differentiate PAH patients from control participants.