Abstract #1759

Reproducibility of Arterial Spin Labeling and Blood-Oxygen Level Dependent Measures of Cerebrovascular Reactivity Using a Controlled Cerebrovascular Challenge

Jeff D. Winter¹, Jackie Leung¹, Manohar Shroff^2,3, Andrea Kassner^1,3

¹Physiology and Experimental Medicine, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ²Diagnostic Imaging, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ³Medical Imaging, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) measures of the cerebral blood flow (CBF) response to CO₂ may benefit clinical assessment of cerebrovascular disease. CVR imaging is typically performed using indirect BOLD signal changes or arterial spin labeling (ASL) CBF measures. In this study, we compared between-day reproducibility of BOLD and ASL (Look-Locker acquisition) CVR measures performed with controlled CO₂ transitions in adults. Reproducibility was quantified with the between-day coefficient of variation (CV). Reproducibility of ASL-CVR measures of CBF the response to CO₂ (CV < 17%) were similar to BOLD-CVR (CV < 19%), which points to the potential clinical utility of this method.