Optimized dark-blood imaging for evaluation of the aorta and subclavian arteries in patients with giant cell arteritis

Giant cell arteritis (GCA), also known as temporal arteritis or Horton's disease, is a granulomatous vasculitis of large- and medium-sized arteries. The disease usually concerns the superficial cranial arteries with predominance of the temporal arteries. However, GCA is not necessarily localized specifically to the temporal or cranial arteries. Involvement of extracranial arteries, mainly the aorta with its branches can also occur. In this work, we present a novel high resolution multi-contrast MR protocol allowing the depiction of vascular geometry with large coverage including the aorta and the subclavian arteries.