Jun Hua1, Qin Qin1, James J. Pekar1, Peter CM van Zijl1
1Dept. of Radiology, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Vascular-space-occupancy (VASO) MRI can measure relative cerebral blood volume (CBV) without contrast agents using non-selective inversion to null blood signal. When spatially selective inversion is employed to null only blood flowing into a slice, signal can be sensitized to arteriolar CBV (CBVa) if a condition can be achieved for which blood-nulling time and arterial transit time are comparable. We show that absolute CBVa can be determined by performing such a scan with and without blood nulling followed by intensity-normalized subtraction. Measured CBVa in human GM was 0.960.18ml/100ml (n=7), in agreement with literature estimates.