# A Rapid Carotid Atherosclerotic Disease Assessment System with 3D MRI

> **NIH NIH R43** · IMAGING BIOMARKER SOLUTIONS, INC. · 2022 · $249,843

## Abstract

Abstract
 Stroke is a major cause of death and long-term disability worldwide. In the United States alone, there are
roughly 0.8 million ischemic strokes each year, with an estimated cost of $34 billion. Among the various
etiologies of stroke, carotid atherosclerotic disease (CAD) is a very common one. Accurate diagnosis of CAD
will be important for effective treatment and prevention of stroke. Although carotid vessel wall (CVW)
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has shown superior advantages in CAD assessment over other imaging
techniques (e.g. ultrasound, CTA, etc.), its widespread in clinical use is slow due to several limitations,
including lengthy and complex imaging procedure, highly demanding on technologists’ training and
experiences and laborious lesion analysis, etc. Therefore, there is a clear need for a fast and automated
image acquisition and analysis solution to improve the adoption in clinical settings.
 In this Phase I project, we plan to develop a rapid clinical CAD assessment solution, which includes a large
coverage single contrast MR imaging procedure and a fully automated analysis software, named CASCADIA,
with innovative image quality evaluation (IQE) and deep learning lesion analysis technologies. We also
designed a new domain adaptation framework to ensure CASCADIA’s performance on images acquired from
various imaging sites. This system is expected to complete clinical CAD assessment of a patient with
unprecedented short time of 5 minutes which is 1/10 of the time in current clinical use. This solution will not
only be an efficient assistant diagnosis tool for clinicians but also benefit patients with shorter imaging time and
potential cost deduction.
 The output of Phase I product will include image quality evaluation, clinical measurements and
atherosclerotic lesion classification. Development of more advanced analysis, such as lesion characterization
and risk score, are planned in Phase II.
 We currently have access to more than 1000 3DMERGE scans acquired from previous research projects (a
large portion of them with radiologists’ annotations), with which, in Phase I, we propose to:
Aim 1: Develop the prototype software of CASCADIA, which includes:
 1) Develop a streamlined CAD assessment workflow by combining IQE and lesion classification modules
 2) Integrate clinical measurement functions, including stenosis, plaque burden and wall thickness
Aim 2: Evaluate performance of the prototype software, which includes:
 1) Evaluate the performance of IQE and lesion classification modules in CASCADIA
 2) Install the proposed solution in a clinical imaging site and test with phantom
 This Phase I proposal is planned for six months with clearly defined timeline and milestones. The
developed prototype will be deployed in clinical settings as a pre-market base for our long-term goal of full-
scale commercial product development in a Phase II application.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10383271
- **Project number:** 1R43HL156327-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** IMAGING BIOMARKER SOLUTIONS, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Dongxiang Xu
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $249,843
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-04-15 → 2023-09-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10383271

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10383271, A Rapid Carotid Atherosclerotic Disease Assessment System with 3D MRI (1R43HL156327-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10383271. Licensed CC0.

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