Supporting measurements or more averages? How to quantify cerebral blood flow most reliably in 5 minutes by arterial spin labeling

Purpose To determine whether sacrificing part of the scan time of pseudo‐continuous arterial spin labeling (PCASL) for measurement of the labeling efficiency and blood T1 is beneficial in terms of CBF quantification reliability. Methods In a simulation framework, 5‐minute scan protocols with differe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Magnetic resonance in medicine Vol. 84; no. 5; pp. 2523 - 2536
Main Authors: Bladt, Piet, van Osch, Matthias J. P., Clement, Patricia, Achten, Eric, Sijbers, Jan, den Dekker, Arnold J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.11.2020
John Wiley and Sons Inc
Subjects:
absolute quantification
Arteries
Blood flow
Brain - diagnostic imaging
Cerebral blood flow
Cerebrovascular Circulation
Data acquisition
Efficiency
Full Papers—Imaging Methodology
Ground truth
Humans
Labeling
labeling efficiency
longitudinal relaxation time of blood
Magnetic Resonance Angiography
Population (statistical)
Population distribution
Population statistics
pseudo‐continuous arterial spin labeling
Reproducibility of Results
Spin labeling
Spin Labels
Variability
labeling efficiency
cerebral blood flow
absolute quantification
pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling
longitudinal relaxation time of blood
ISSN:0740-3194, 1522-2594, 1522-2594
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Purpose To determine whether sacrificing part of the scan time of pseudo‐continuous arterial spin labeling (PCASL) for measurement of the labeling efficiency and blood T1 is beneficial in terms of CBF quantification reliability. Methods In a simulation framework, 5‐minute scan protocols with different scan time divisions between PCASL data acquisition and supporting measurements were evaluated in terms of CBF estimation variability across both noise and ground truth parameter realizations taken from the general population distribution. The entire simulation experiment was repeated for a single‐post‐labeling delay (PLD), multi‐PLD, and free‐lunch time‐encoded (te‐FL) PCASL acquisition strategy. Furthermore, a real data study was designed for preliminary validation. Results For the considered population statistics, measuring the labeling efficiency and the blood T1 proved beneficial in terms of CBF estimation variability for any distribution of the 5‐minute scan time compared to only acquiring ASL data. Compared to single‐PLD PCASL without support measurements as recommended in the consensus statement, a 26%, 33%, and 42% reduction in relative CBF estimation variability was found for optimal combinations of supporting measurements with single‐PLD, free‐lunch, and multi‐PLD PCASL data acquisition, respectively. The benefit of taking the individual variation of blood T1 into account was also demonstrated in the real data experiment. Conclusions Spending time to measure the labeling efficiency and the blood T1 instead of acquiring more averages of the PCASL data proves to be advisable for robust CBF quantification in the general population.
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ISSN:0740-3194
1522-2594
1522-2594
DOI:10.1002/mrm.28314