{"id":229834,"date":"2026-01-26T17:10:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/morphological-characteristics-of-healthy-and-aneurysmal-internal-carotid-artery-bifurcations"},"modified":"2026-01-26T17:10:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:10:31","slug":"morphological-characteristics-of-healthy-and-aneurysmal-internal-carotid-artery-bifurcations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/morphological-characteristics-of-healthy-and-aneurysmal-internal-carotid-artery-bifurcations","title":{"rendered":"Morphological characteristics of healthy and aneurysmal internal carotid artery bifurcations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/morphological-characteristics-of-healthy-and-aneurysmal-internal-carotid-artery-bifurcations.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Internal carotid artery (ICA) bifurcation (ICAB) aneurysms carry high rupture risk, treatment challenges, and recurrence due to complex morphology and origination patterns. Given their relatively low incidence, research on ICAB morphology is limited. This study analyzed ICAB morphology in aneurysmal, contralateral, and healthy bifurcations, highlighting bilateral differences, anterior cerebral artery (ACA) dominance, and deviations from the vascular optimality principle (VOP).<\/p>\n<p>A total of 194 angiographic volumes (40 aneurysmal, 28 contralateral, 126 healthy) were evaluated. ICAB morphology included parent\/daughter vessel diameters and angle between the ICA and middle cerebral artery (MCA; \u0424<sub>MCA<\/sub>), angle between the ICA and ACA (\u0424<sub>ACA<\/sub>), total ICAB angle (\u0424<sub>ICAB<\/sub>; \u0424<sub>MCA<\/sub> + \u0424<sub>ACA<\/sub>). Aneurysm characteristics (size, neck, origination) and VOP parameters (radius ratio [RR] and junction exponent [<i>n<\/i>]) were evaluated. Bilateral analysis accounted for ACA dominance.<\/p>\n<p>Compared with controls, aneurysmal ICABs exhibited wider \u03a6<sub>MCA<\/sub> (57.22\u00b0 \u00b1 12.22\u00b0 vs 43.74\u00b0 \u00b1 9.41\u00b0, p &lt; 0.001; area under the curve [AUC] = 0.83) and \u03a6<sub>ICAB<\/sub> (160.27\u00b0 \u00b1 16.16\u00b0 vs 143.66\u00b0 \u00b1 10.74\u00b0, p &lt; 0.001; AUC = 0.79), but not \u03a6<sub>ACA<\/sub>, in univariate, multivariate (AUC = 0.85), and bilateral analyses. Angle thresholds of 51.7\u00b0 for \u03a6<sub>MCA<\/sub> and 152.4\u00b0 for \u03a6<sub>ICAB<\/sub> were identified. Aneurysms originated predominantly off the apex (65%) and ACA (30%). Most occurred on ICABs with dominant (31%) and codominant (58%) A1 segments. Aneurysm neck, but not size, correlated with \u03a6<sub>MCA<\/sub> and \u03a6<sub>ICAB, <\/sub>but not \u03a6<sub>ACA<\/sub>. In controls, \u03a6<sub>MCA <\/sub>was larger and \u03a6<sub>ACA<\/sub> smaller on the dominant A1 side, with no \u03a6<sub>ICAB <\/sub>difference. There was no statistically significant difference in RR and <i>n<\/i> values regardless of aneurysm presence and dominance status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Internal carotid artery (ICA) bifurcation (ICAB) aneurysms carry high rupture risk, treatment challenges, and recurrence due to complex morphology and origination patterns. Given their relatively low incidence, research on ICAB morphology is limited. This study analyzed ICAB morphology in aneurysmal, contralateral, and healthy bifurcations, highlighting bilateral differences, anterior cerebral artery (ACA) dominance, and deviations from [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}