David Thomas Pilkinton1,2, John a Detre2,3,
Ravinder Reddy1,2
1Biochemistry &
Molecular Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United
States; 2Center for Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging,
Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United
States; 3Center for Functional Neuroimaging, Unversity of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
To accurately quantify CBF with ASL, it is necessary to have an estimate of the T1 of arterial blood (T1a). However, it is very challenging to measure T1a in vivo because of the high flow velocity in arteries and the relatively small artery diameters, particularly in small animals. A PASL approach for measuring T1a has been suggested in the literature to avoid these problems. We implemented an similar PASL approach to measure T1a in vivo which increases the dynamic range, avoids possible venous signal contamination, and maximizes the SNR in the presence of static field inhomogeneities.