Zeinab Al-Rekabi1,2, Kelly McPhee3, Kevin Fitzpatrick3,4, Bruce Bjornson3,5, Alexander Rauscher3,6
1University of British Columbia , Vancouver, BC, Canada; 2University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; 3University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; 4Children's Brain Mapping Centre, BC Children's Hospital; 5Children's Brain Mapping Centre, BC Children's Hospital and Child & Family Research Institute; 6UBC MRI Research Centre
Susceptibility Weighted Imaging combines magnitude and phase of a high resolution fully flow-compensated 3D gradient echo scan, from which detailed images of the cerebral venous vasculature can be obtained without using a contrast agent. Due to the required high pass filtering of the phase, visualization of veins at the brain's surface has been poor. We used bilateral filtering to preserve vein related phase information at the brain's surface, by minimizing blurring across boundaries between brain and noise. A combination of resulting surface venograms with a structural scan provides images of the brains