High-fidelity infant regional cerebral blood flow map with isotropic 2mm resolution acquired through segmented 3D GRASE pCASL

Motivation: The small infant brain sizes necessitate high-fidelity and high-resolution imaging. Infant cerebral blood flow (CBF) maps at isotropic 2mm resolution are not available. Goal(s): We aimed to develop a high-resolution infant arterial spin-labeled (ASL) MRI protocol for understanding fundamental infant brain physiology in health and disorders. Approach: We tested and optimized a cutting-edge segmented 3D GRASE pseudo-continuous-ASL (pCASL) sequence for imaging infant brains. Results: We achieved the infant CBF maps with highest resolution available to date at isotropic 2mm, capturing the finest details of heterogeneous brain perfusion across various structures including smaller structures such as cerebellum and basal ganglia. Impact: Capitalizing on an advanced segmented 3D GRASE pCASL with background suppression, we acquired the highest-resolution infant CBF maps available at isotropic 2mm, providing unprecedented details of regional CBF variations across whole infant brain structures characterized by small sizes.