Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 22, 2026
Construction and Application of Cerebral Functional Region-Based Cerebral Blood Flow Atlas Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Arterial Spin Labeling
Published on: May 31, 2024
Comparison of pulsed and pseudocontinuous arterial spin-labeling for measuring CO2 -induced cerebrovascular
Felipe B Tancredi1, Claudine J Gauthier, Cécile Madjar
1Institut de génie biomédical, Département de physiologie, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. felipe.tancredi@umontreal.ca
Purpose:
To compare the performance of pulsed and pseudocontinuous arterial spin-labeling (PASL and pCASL) methods in measuring CO(2) -induced cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR).
Materials And Methods:
Subjects were scanned using both ASL sequences during a controlled hypercapnia procedure and visual stimulation. CVR was computed as the percent CO(2) -induced increase in cerebral blood flow (Δ%CBF) per mmHg increase in end-tidal PCO(2) . Visually evoked responses were expressed as Δ%CBF. Resting CBF and temporal signal-to-noise ratio were also computed. Regionally averaged values for the different quantities were compared in gray matter (GM) and visual cortex (VC) using t-tests.
Results:
Both PASL and pCASL yielded comparable respective values for resting CBF (56 ± 3 and 56 ± 4 mL/min/100g) and visually evoked responses (75 ± 5% and 81 ± 4%). Values of CVR determined using pCASL (GM 4.4 ± 0.2, VC 8 ± 1 Δ%CBF/mmHg), however, were significantly higher than those measured using PASL (GM 3.0 ± 0.6, VC 5 ± 1 Δ%CBF/mmHg) in both GM and VC. The percentage of GM voxels in which statistically significant hypercapnia responses were detected was also higher for pCASL (27 ± 5% vs. 16 ± 3% for PASL).
Conclusion:
pCASL may be less prone to underestimation of CO(2) -induced flow changes due to improved label timing control.
