Assessing Kidney Perfusion Using Arterial Spin Labeling and Radial Acquisition for Rapid Characterization of Inflow Dynamics

Nathan S. Artz¹, Kevin Johnson¹, Yin Huang¹, Elizabeth A. Sadowski², Sean B. Fain^1,2

Quantifying arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion measurements using data acquired at only one delay time requires assumptions for quantification that may be invalid, especially in diseased kidneys which may demonstrate a wide variety of blood flows. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of efficiently acquiring data at multiple delay times using a radial balanced SSFP approach. ASL-FAIR was performed in a healthy volunteer at 1.5 T during which unique radial projections were continually acquired from 0.2 to 2 seconds following inversion. Twenty delay time images were acquired over 11 minutes. The control and tag images show reasonable image clarity and the difference images clearly demonstrate perfusion however streaking is originating from below the left kidney (right side). Future work will focus on reducing the streak artifact using motion compensation techniques and/or optimizing k-space trajectories.