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Application of selective saturation to image the dynamics of arterial blood flow during brain activation using magnetic resonance imaging
Author(s) -
Vazquez Alberto L.,
Lee Gregory R.,
HernandezGarcia Luis,
Noll Douglas C.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.20813
Subject(s) - saturation (graph theory) , signal (programming language) , temporal resolution , nuclear magnetic resonance , blood flow , magnetic resonance imaging , biological system , biomedical engineering , perfusion , image resolution , chemistry , physics , computer science , optics , mathematics , medicine , radiology , biology , combinatorics , programming language
A saturation‐based approach is proposed to image the arterial blood flow signal with temporal resolution of 1 to 2 s and in‐plane spatial resolution of a few millimeters. Using a saturation approach to suppress the undesired background stationary signal allows the blood water that enters the slice to be imaged at some specified later time. Since the blood protons that are being imaged are not restricted to the intravascular space, this technique is also sensitive to tissue perfusion signal contributions. The signal uptake characteristics of the saturation method proposed were used to study the different signal contributions as a function of the acquisition parameters. A typical perfusion acquisition (FAIR) was also used for comparison. The proposed method was demonstrated in a functional motor activation experiment and the observed signal changes were smaller than those obtained using the FAIR acquisition. The dynamics of the saturation method and FAIR temporal signal changes were investigated and time constants between 2 and 44 s were estimated. The tissue signal contribution to the saturation method's signal was small over the range of acquisition parameters that sensitized it to the arterial compartment. Magn Reson Med, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.