J. Jean Chen1,
David H. Salat1, H. Diana Rosas, 12
1A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical
Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown,
MA, United States; 2Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General
Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
Huntington's
disease (HD) has been associated with wide-spread cortical and subcortical
grey matter atrophy, in which the role of cerebral blood flow (CBF)
abnormalities is potentially significant. However, low spatial resolution
erodes the ability of conventional techniques to reveal spatially-specific
CBF changes. In this work, we present, for the first time, HD-related
quantitative CBF changes measured using pulsed arterial-spin labelling
(PASL). Regressing out the effect of cortical thinning, our results still
show significant underlying CBF reduction across the cortex. CBF also
decreased in the striatum and hippocampus. CBF reduction patterns were found
to be partially independent of structural atrophy.
Keywords