Yuan-Yu Hsu1,2,
Wan-Chun Kwan3, Kun-Eng Lim1,2, Ho-Ling Liu4,5
1Dept. of Medical Imaging, Buddhist Tzu
Chi General Hospital-Taipei Branch, Xindian, Taipei, Taiwan; 2School
of Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan; 3Dept. of
Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Sciences, National Tsing Hua
University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; 4Graduate Institute of Medical
Physics and Imaging Science, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 5MRI
center, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan
To
evaluate the cerebrovascular response of normal tissues and cerebral tumors
under breath-holding challenges by using 3-T blood oxygenation-level
dependent (BOLD) and vascular space occupancy (VASO) MRI. Six normal adults
and 14 patients with brain tumors were studied. There were significant BOLD
signal increases and VASO signal decreases in normal appearing gray matter of
normal subjects and patients, but not in the tumors. Interestingly, there
were BOLD signal decreases or VASO signal increases in two meningiomas. Both
3-T BOLD and VASO MRI can detect breath-hold regulated cerebrovascular
changes, with a higher sensitivity for signal detection of BOLD technique.