Abstract #0511

Measurement of Parenchymal T2* Changes During Visual Stimulation Using Grey Matter Nulled and VASO FMRI

Yuji Shen¹, Ida Mengyi Pu², Risto A. Kauppinen³

¹School of Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; ²Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK; ³Biomedical NMR Research Center, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH 03755, USA

It is feasible to use MRI for quantification of blood oxygen saturation (Y) and oxygen extraction fraction (OEF) in vivo from transverse relaxation data. In this study we used grey matter nulled (GMN) and vascular space occupancy (VASO) fMRI techniques to measure T2* in brain parenchyma at baseline and during visual stimulation at 3T. The change in T2* obtained by GMN fMRI was 1.80.8 ms, which was much greater than that detected by VASO fMRI (0.60.3 ms). The venous oxygen saturation (Yv) during activation and OEF derived from VASO data were found to be 0.770.02 and 0.220.02, respectively.