Simultaneous Assessment of Intracranial Artery and Paravascular CSF Pulsation Using 3D Whole-Brain Diffusion-Prepared...

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Biophysics
• Medical Physics

Background:

• Assessing intracranial artery and paravascular cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pulsations is crucial for understanding brain health.
• Current noninvasive methods lack the ability to simultaneously quantify both pulsations.
• Gaps exist in understanding the relationship between vascular pulsatility and glymphatic function.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a noninvasive, quantitative MRI approach for simultaneous assessment of intracranial artery and paravascular CSF pulsations.
• To validate the proposed technique in healthy human participants.

Main Methods:

• Developed a 3D whole-brain Diffusion-prepared Cine bSSFP (DECAF) MRI technique.
• Utilized 3D golden-angle radial trajectory, retrospective pulse gating, and GRASP reconstruction for cine imaging.
• Established semi-automatic pipelines for quantifying arterial wall and paravascular CSF pulsatility indices, with ADC correction for bSSFP effects.

Main Results:

• Achieved high-resolution, whole-brain cine imaging with 25 cardiac phases in ~8 minutes.
• Demonstrated reliable quantification and good scan-rescan reproducibility of arterial and CSF pulsatility indices.
• Observed strong temporal and spatial relationships between arterial wall and paravascular CSF pulsations, with significant correlation.

Conclusions:

• The DECAF MR technique enables simultaneous, noninvasive quantification of intracranial artery and paravascular CSF pulsations.
• This imaging tool can advance research into vascular/aging-related diseases and glymphatic dysfunction.
• The findings highlight the interconnectedness of vascular and CSF dynamics in the brain.