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Abstract #1755

White Matter Cerebral Blood Flow Detection Using Arterial Spin Labelling

Nyssa Elaine Craig1, Dinesh Selvarajah2, Esben Thade Petersen3, Xavier Golay4, Solomon Tesfaye5, Paul Griffiths1, Iain David Wilkinson1

1Academic Unit of Radiology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom; 2Diabetes Unit, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire; 3Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark; 4Centre for Neuroimaging Techniques, University College London, London, United Kingdom; 5Diabetes Unit, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom


The sensitivity of the Arterial Spin Labelling technique to detect Cerebral Blood Flow (CBF) within the white matter of the brain has been under dispute for some time. The present study poses a vasodilatory challenge to thirteen normal, healthy control subjects using Acetazolamide, and uses the QUASAR sequence to assess CBF both pre- and post-administration. The results show a high contrast to noise ratio, with a statistically significant increase in mean white matter perfusion across all subjects, indicating that the effect can be detected in this tissue type, despite lower absolute flow values than those detected in grey matter.

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