David D. Shin1, Youngkyoo Jung1,
Ajit Shankaranarayanan2, Khaled Restom1, Jia Guo1,
Wen-Ming Luh3, Peter Bandettini3, Eric C. Wong1,
Thomas T. Liu1
1University of California, San Diego,
CA, United States; 2GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, United States; 3National
Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States
The
optimized pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (Opt-PCASL) is a variant
of the PCASL method that provides higher tagging efficiency through
estimation and correction of phase errors. The original implementation
required extensive user-intervention, including subjective definition of
vascular territories and manual input of scan parameters. A new automated
optimization procedure incorporates vascular territory imaging for objective
measure of vessel territory maps and a scan process that requires minimal
user intervention. In three healthy subjects, the phase errors were reduced
below 15 after one calibration step. The approach is expected to facilitate
the use of the Opt-PCASL technique for quantitative fMRI studies.