Imaging of microvascular pulsatility using Fourier velocity encoding

Motivation: Vascular pulsatility has been hypothesized to be an important component in the etiology of microvascular damage in dementia. There are currently no well established methods for non-invasive mapping of pulsatility at the microvascular scale. Goal(s): To provide a simple and robust means of mapping microvascular pulsatility in the brain. Approach: We use Fourier velocity encoding to measure the velocity spectrum in each voxel, with retrospective gating to the cardiac cycle, producing quantitative metrics of pulsatility. Results: Our preliminary data shows a clear modulation of microvascular flow across the cardiac cycle, with a spatial distribution that is consistent with vascular geometry. Impact: In this work we demonstrate a simple and robust method for imaging vascular pulsatility in the brain. This provides a new metric for studying the role of pulsatility in dementia, and a potential new biomarker for microvascular damage.