Feng Xu1, Andrew Hebrank2, Uma Yezhuvath1, Daren Denniston3, Sherwood Brown3, Denise C. Park2, Hanzhang Lu1
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 2Center for Brain Health, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA; 3Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA
The balance of oxygen delivery and consumption represents an important homeostasis of brain physiology. Venous oxygenation is a useful marker for this balance. A lower venous oxygenation usually indicates that the delivery cannot keep up with the consumption. Here we used a recently developed T2-relaxation-underspin-tagging (TRUST) MRI technique to assess venous oxygenation as a function of age. The data suggest that the venous oxygenation shows a small but significant decrease with age. The CBF shows a decrease at a similar rate, but the whole brain oxygen metabolic rate did not show a reduction.