Zungho Zun1, Eric C. Wong2, Krishna S. Nayak3
1Department of Electrical Engineering , University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2Departments of Radiology and Psychiatry, University of California, La Jolla, CA, USA; 3Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Background suppression (BGS) is widely used in brain arterial spin labeling (ASL) as a means to reduce physiological noise due to subject motion and metabolic fluctuation. We performed pulsed ASL myocardial blood flow (MBF) experiments with and without BGS. Using BGS, myocardial signal was reduced by 82%, but the change in physiological noise and MBF measurement confidence was statistically insignificant. This study demonstrates that static myocardial tissue signals are not significant contributors to physiological noise in myocardial ASL.