Dependency of R2 and R2 * relaxation on Gd-DTPA concentration in arterial blood: Influence of hematocrit and magnetic field strength.

Dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) MRI is clinically used to measure brain perfusion by monitoring the dynamic passage of a bolus of contrast agent through the brain. For quantitative analysis of the DSC images, the arterial input function is required. It is known that the original assumption of a linear relation between the R2(*) relaxation and the arterial contrast agent concentration is invalid, although the exact relation is as of yet unknown. Studying this relation in vitro is time-consuming, because of the widespread variations in field strengths, MRI sequences, contrast agents, and physiological conditions. This study aims to simulate the R2(*) versus contrast concentration relation under varying physiological and technical conditions using an adapted version of an open-source simulation tool. The approach was validated with previously acquired data in human whole blood at 1.5 T by means of a gradient-echo sequence (proof-of-concept). Subsequently, the impact of hematocrit, field strength, and oxygen saturation on this relation was studied for both gradient-echo and spin-echo sequences. The results show that for both gradient-echo and spin-echo sequences, the relaxivity increases with hematocrit and field strength, while the hematocrit dependency was nonlinear for both types of MRI sequences. By contrast, oxygen saturation has only a minor effect. In conclusion, the simulation setup has proven to be an efficient method to rapidly calibrate and estimate the relation between R2(*) and gadolinium concentration in whole blood. This knowledge will be useful in future clinical work to more accurately retrieve quantitative information on brain perfusion.

MR Vascular Fingerprinting with Hybrid Gradient-Spin Echo Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast MRI for Characterization of Microvasculature in Gliomas.

Characterization of tumor microvasculature is important in tumor assessment and studying treatment response. This is possible by acquiring vascular biomarkers with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based on dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC). We propose magnetic resonance vascular fingerprinting (MRVF) for hybrid echo planar imaging (HEPI) acquired during the first passage of the contrast agent (CA). The proposed approach was evaluated in patients with gliomas, and we simultaneously estimated vessel radius and relative cerebral blood volume. These parameters were also compared to the respective values estimated using the previously introduced vessel size imaging (VSI) technique. The results of both methods were found to be consistent. MRVF was also found to be robust to noise in the estimation of the parameters. DSC-HEPI-based MRVF provides characterization of microvasculature in gliomas with a short acquisition time and can be further improved in several ways to increase our understanding of tumor physiology.

Assessment of cerebral hemodynamics during neurosurgical procedures using laser speckle image analysis.

Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) is a severe medical condition associated with a significant cause of mortality throughout the world. Cisterna magna injection model is accepted widely to mimic clinical aSAH and is performed on small animal models to study aSAH during neurosurgery. Coherent light scattered from the surface of the rat brain is used to infer information about the variations in blood flow during this condition. We obtained speckle images from the exposed cortex during the entire experiment using an external tissue imaging system. Contrast and fractal analyses are carried out for the recorded speckle pattern time series. Correlation analysis based on Hurst exponent for these images is found to be a more sensitive tool in studying aSAH as compared to routinely used laser speckle contrast analysis for assessing the changes in blood flow velocity. Additionally, our studies provide improved blood flow detection sensitivity with image Hurst exponent in combination with computed fractal dimension, during an event of aSAH.