Olaf Dietrich1, Ulrike Attenberger, Konstantin Nikolaou, Michael Peller1, Maximilian F. Reiser
1Josef Lissner Laboratory for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Clinical Radiology, LMU Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany
In oxygen-enhanced MRI, a block paradigm is frequently used consisting of a series of T1-weighted scans acquired during alternating inhalation of room air and oxygen resulting in a characteristic signal-time course for each pixel. In previous studies, this time course was evaluated by calculating the cross-correlation coefficient of each pixel response function and the ideal box-car waveform. In this study, the cross-correlation is analyzed in O2-MRI with continuous scanning, i.e. including the dynamic signal change during oxygen wash-in and wash-out. It is shown that correlation coefficients are significantly higher if a (shifted) exponential reference function is used for correlation analysis.