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Prostate perfusion mapping using Fourier-transform based velocity-selective arterial spin labeling: Choice of cutoff
Dapeng Liu1,2, Dan Zhu1,2, Feng Xu1,2
1Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Purpose:
To develop velocity selective arterial spin labeling (VSASL) protocols for prostate blood flow (PBF) and prostate blood volume (PBV) mapping.
Methods:
Fourier-transform based velocity-selective inversion and saturation pulse trains were utilized in VSASL sequences to obtain blood flow and blood volume weighted perfusion signal, respectively. Here four cutoff velocities (Vcut = 0.25, 0.50, 1.00, and 1.50 cm/s) for PBF and PBV mapping sequences were evaluated with a parallel implementation in brain for measuring cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral blood volume (CBV) with identical 3D readout. This study was performed at 3T on eight young and middle-aged healthy subjects comparing both perfusion weighted signal (PWS) and temporal SNR (tSNR).
Results:
In contrast to CBF and CBV, the PWS of PBF and PBV were rather unobservable at Vcut of 1.00 or 1.50 cm/s and both PWS and tSNR of PBF and PBV considerably increased at the lower Vcut , indicating that blood moves much slower in prostate than in brain. Similar to the brain results, the tSNR of PBV-weighted signal was about two to four times over the corresponding values of PBF-weighted signal. The results also suggested a trend of reduced vascularity within prostate during aging.
Conclusion:
For prostate, a low Vcut of 0.25-0.50 cm/s seemed necessary for both PBF and PBV measurements to obtain adequate perfusion signal. As in brain, PBV mapping yielded a higher tSNR than PBF.
