The technology includes MRI methods, systems, and software for reliably imaging vasculature and vascular wall thickness while compensating for aperiodic intrinsic motion of a patient during respiration. To overcome the loss of the orthogonality due to uncompensated residual motions and after a lapse of time equal to the trigger delay commenced at the cardiac cycle, the system acquires multiple consecutive time-resolved images of the arterial wall. The cine images are processed offline and a wall thickness measurement is produced.
The method improves arterial wall imaging by increasing the success rate of obtaining good and excellent quality images and imaging slice-vessel orthogonality. The method also provides more precise wall measurements and a more distinct difference between healthy subjects and patients.
The methodology and system can be applied to any commercially available MRI scanner.