Dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI with a prebolus contrast agent administration design for improved absolute...

Arterial partial-volume effects (PVEs) often hamper reproducible absolute quantification of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral blood volume (CBV) obtained by dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI (DSC-MRI). The aim of this study was to examine whether arterial PVEs in DSC-MRI data can be minimized by rescaling the arterial input function (AIF) using a sagittal-sinus venous output function obtained following a prebolus administration of a low dose of contrast agent.

The study was carried out as a test-retest experiment in 20 healthy volunteers to examine the repeatability of the CBF and CBV estimates. All subjects were scanned twice with 7-20 days between investigations.

DSC-MRI returned an overestimated average whole-brain CBF of 220 ± 44 mL/100 g/min (mean ± SD) before correction and 44 ± 15 mL/100 g/min when applying the prebolus design, averaged over all scans. Average whole-brain CBV was 20 ± 2.0 mL/100 g before correction and 4.0 ± 1.0 mL/100 g after prebolus correction.

Quantitative estimates of CBF and CBV, obtained with the proposed prebolus DSC-MRI technique, approached those typically obtained by other perfusion modalities. The CBF and CBV estimates showed good repeatability.