Non-Invasive Perfusion MR Imaging of the Human Brain via Breath-Holding

Motivation: DSC is the leading methodology for MR-based perfusion imaging. However, the technique's reliance on invasive gadolinium injections poses a major limitation. Goal(s): Can breath-holding induce perfusion contrast that is exploitable using DSC MRI?Approach: Ten healthy subjects underwent MRI at both 3T and 7T, while performing eight 16 s breath-holds. Breath-hold-induced signal changes were fed into a DSC MRI analysis pipeline, and perfusion was quantified. Results: Calculated cerebral perfusion values were within the physiological range of literature values; the breath-hold task yielded significantly higher contrast-to-noise and GM-to-WM contrast with higher field strength and increased scan time, although this plateaued at roughly 6 min. Impact: For the first time, we show that DSC-MRI using breath-holding allows for the quantification of perfusion parameters. This may have broad implications for neurovascular disease, either circumventing the need for invasive gadolinium injections or shedding additional light into pathology.