Human brain: reliability and reproducibility of pulsed arterial spin-labeling perfusion MR imaging

The Committee of Human Research of the University of California San Francisco approved this study, and all volunteers provided written informed consent. The goal of this study was to prospectively determine the global and regional reliability and reproducibility of noninvasive brain perfusion measurements obtained with different pulsed arterial spin-labeling (ASL) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging methods and to determine the extent to which within-subject variability and random noise limit reliability and reproducibility. Thirteen healthy volunteers were examined twice within 2 hours. The pulsed ASL methods compared in this study differ mainly with regard to magnetization transfer and eddy current effects. There were two main results: (a) Pulsed ASL MR imaging consistently had high measurement reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients greater than 0.75) and reproducibility (coefficients of variation less than 8.5%), and (b) random noise rather than within-subject variability limited reliability and reproducibility. It was concluded that low signal-to-noise ratios substantially limit the reliability and reproducibility of perfusion measurements.