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Abstract #3731

The effect of diffusion on quantitative BOLD parameter estimates acquired with the Asymmetric Spin Echo technique

Nicholas P Blockley1, Naomi C Holland1, and Alan J Stone1

1FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

The results of a recently described streamlined quantitative BOLD (qBOLD) technique suggest that this method may overestimate the deoxygenated blood volume (DBV), leading to an underestimate of the oxygen extraction fraction (OEF). We hypothesise that this is due to the effect of diffusion, which is assumed to be zero in the analytical qBOLD model. In this study we performed Monte Carlo simulations to investigate this hypothesis and found that DBV and OEF measurements were vessel size dependent. However, the R2’ measurements which underlie qBOLD were found to be a reliable measure of deoxyhaemoglobin content above a vessel radius of 10μm.

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