Slab-Selective, BOLD-Corrected VASO (SS-VASO) in Human Brain at 7T

Laurentius Huber¹, Dimo Ivanov¹, Markus Streicher¹, Robert Turner¹

To understand human brain neural activity it is helpful to study direct physiological variables, such as cerebral blood volume (CBV). Vascular space occupancy (VASO) is a non-invasive fMRI method that measures change in CBV. VASO at 7 T is limited by low signal and BOLD contamination. Here we present a slab-selective, BOLD-corrected SS-VASO variant that avoids these problems, and provides reliable CBV changes in vivo with high sensitivity. Temporal and spatial properties of BOLD and VASO signal are directly compared.