Quantitative evaluation of hemodynamic response after hypercapnia among different brain territories by fMRI

The brain vascular system has an autoregulatory mechanism that maintains blood perfusion within normal limits at the capillary level. Partially due to its clinical importance, it is of interest to better understand the mechanisms involved in vascular regulation. Therefore, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we quantitatively investigated hemodynamic response characteristics of regions supplied by the main cerebral arteries, during two breath holding tests (BHT): after inspiration and after expiration. We used an auto-regressive method capable of estimating four signal parameters: onset delay, full width at half maximum (FWHM), time-to-peak and amplitude. The onset delay was significantly longer for the posterior cerebral artery (PCA) than for middle cerebral artery (MCA) and anterior arteries (ACA). FWHM and time-to-peak were larger in the ACA territory, indicating a slower blood flow in this region. Differences were also observed in the amplitude among the three areas, where MCA and PCA territories showed the smallest and the highest amplitudes, respectively. Moreover, differences were found in amplitude and onset when BHT was performed after inspiration as compared to BHT after expiration. Time-to-peak and FWHM showed no statistical differences between these two challenges. Such results are related to regional anatomical specificities and biochemical mechanisms responsible for vasodilation, such as those related to vascularity and vessel sizes.