Estimation of cerebral blood flow using the pulse wave amplitude in brain MRI

Motivation: Flow-related enhancement (FREE)-MRI could be used to generate phase-resolved perfusion-weighted brain maps. Goal(s): To test cerebral blood flow (CBF) estimation using the pulse wave amplitude in FREE-MRI. Secondly, the potential for acceleration was evaluated retrospectively. Approach: Twenty-four healthy subjects had cerebral MRI with balanced steady-state free precession imaging (FREE-MRI) and with pCASL-MRI for comparison. Results: The value distribution of the estimated CBF showed disparity of the values between both techniques in the histogram. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test confirmed differing probability distributions. The approximated CBF from FREE-MRI remained stable until 50% of the data was reconstructed and reveals large potential acceleration. Impact: The proposed technique allows a rough approximation of the cerebral blood flow. Further sequence optimization must be achieved to improve the measurement of lowly perfused tissues. Nevertheless, the technique offers large potential for imaging speed optimization.