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Updated: May 5, 2026
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Quantification of Pulmonary Perfusion using Calibrated Arterial Spin Labeling
Published on: May 30, 2011
MVP-VSASL: measuring MicroVascular Pulsatility using velocity-selective arterial spin labeling
Conan Chen1,2,3, Ryan A Barnes1,2, Katherine J Bangen4,5
1Center for Functional MRI, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
Purpose:
By leveraging the small-vessel specificity of velocity-selective arterial spin labeling (VSASL), we present a novel technique for measuring cerebral MicroVascular Pulsatility named MVP-VSASL.
Theory And Methods:
We present a theoretical model relating the pulsatile, cerebral blood flow-driven VSASL signal to the microvascular pulsatility index ( ), a widely used metric for quantifying cardiac-dependent fluctuations. The model describes the dependence of the of VSASL signal (denoted ) on bolus duration (an adjustable VSASL sequence parameter) and provides guidance for selecting a value of that maximizes the SNR of the measurement. The model predictions were assessed in humans using data acquired with retrospectively cardiac-gated VSASL sequences over a broad range of values. In vivo measurements were also used to demonstrate the feasibility of whole-brain voxel-wise pulsatility mapping, assess intrasession repeatability of , and illustrate the potential of this method to explore an association with age.
Results:
The theoretical model showed excellent agreement to the empirical data in a gray matter region of interest (average value of 0.898 0.107 across six subjects). We further showed excellent intrasession repeatability of the pulsatility measurement ( , ) and the potential to characterize associations with age ( , ).
Conclusion:
We have introduced a novel, VSASL-based cerebral microvascular pulsatility technique, which may facilitate investigation of cognitive disorders where damage to the microvasculature has been implicated.
