Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast Enhanced MRI brain perfusion?

Question

Hi,

There are many situation in which one may want to use MRI to determine cerebral blood flow. I want to compare groups or the effect of medicaiton. But how can I best do this using DSCE-MRI?

For example Rempp et. al. fits both the arterial input function (bolus) and the tissue curve (bolus)with a gamma variate. Then using fourier-deconvolution he finds the 'actual' tissue concentration curve.

But for me none of this is working. For example I have a Echo Planer Imaging scan at a temperal resolution of 1.5 seconds. If I just manually locate the arterial curve in the area of the circle of willis - and then the second curve in the (periventricular ) white matter I don't get nice curves - and they most definitely don't give great deconvolutions. The tissue curves are way lower than the artery curves. And the artery bolus-curve seems wider then the tissue bolus.

I don't know what to do. Is it an image acquisition problem- Do I need to use filtering?

HELP!

Answer 1

There are many ways of examining brain functions and blood flow. an fMRI (functional) MRI will show you the functions of the brain. Also and MRA/MRV Magnetic Resonance Angiogram/ Magnetic Resonance Angio Venogram. This is something you should contact a Neuro/Specials Radiologist about. They would know best. Based on my experience at the hospital (5 years) MRV w/wo contrast (gadolinium) is probably the best modality for examining blood flow in the brain.