Zungho Zun1, Eric C. Wong2, Krishna S. Nayak3
1Department of Electrical Engineering , University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2Departments of Radiology and Psychiatry, University of California, La Jolla, CA, USA; 3Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
We demonstrate the feasibility of myocardial blood flow (MBF) measurement in humans using arterial spin labeling (ASL) and present an analysis of thermal and physiological noise and their impact on MBF measurement error. A desired measurement error of 0.1 ml/ml/min could be achieved with 85.5% confidence with thermal noise alone, but with 18.2 to 94.0 % confidence based on physiological noise measured in a fifteen subjects. We demonstrate that MBF can be assessed in humans using ASL, and that SNR improvement and the reduction of physiological noise are key areas for future development.