Embolic ischemic strokes cause significant mortality and morbidity worldwide. It has beenproposed that some of these strokes are due to unstable carotid plaques with intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH) but a low overall degree of stenosis. Our aim was to test a fat-saturated T1-weighted black blood sequence on MRI for the detection of IPH in symptomatic individuals and to quantify the relation between IPH, severity of stenoses, and ischemic brain lesions.