Jinsoo Uh1, Yan Cao2, Hanzhang Lu1
1Advanced Imaging Research Center,
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 2Department
of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, United
States
We
have developed a technique based on Vascular-Space-Occupancy (VASO) MRI to
measure spinal cord blood volume. The VASO sequence has been carefully
adjusted to deal with the challenging aspects in imaging spinal cord such as
small dimensions, tissue inhomogeneities, and cord motions. We compared two
VASO protocol schemes and the one using multiple spin echoes showed better
performance. The scBV values with this protocol were 1.80.2 ml/100 ml tissue
for gray matter and 1.10.1 for white matter. To our knowledge, this is the
first report of blood volume in gray and white matters of human spinal cord.
Keywords