Fast T1 Mapping to Assess Contrast Agent Clearing in the Human Brain

Motivation: Waste clearance mechanisms are essential to maintain homeostasis of the brain. Impairment of such mechanisms may play a key role in various diseases. Goal(s): To gain insights into waste clearance processes and propose characteristic metrics to describe them. Approach: We injected contrast agent intravenously and monitored clearance with serial T1 mapping utilizing fast single-shot T1 acquisition with radial FLASH and NLINV reconstruction in healthy volunteers. Results: Time-T1 values of full protocol with 35 acquisitions fit well to our exponential model and can be characterized by clearance time $$$\tau$$$ and biggest T1 difference max ΔT1. A dramatically reduced acquisition protocol gives similar results. Impact: Advanced fast single-shot T1 mapping is promising to characterize waste clearance function in the human brain. Because of a short whole brain acquisition time of 3 minutes it can be integrated easily into existing clinical protocols.