Improved Multislice Cerebral Blood Flow Imaging Using Velocity-Selective Arterial Spin Labeling

Zungho Zun¹, Brian A. Hargreaves¹, Greg Zaharchuk¹

We demonstrate that velocity-selective arterial spin labeling (VSASL) can be improved particularly for 2D multislice cerebral blood flow (CBF) imaging. (1) Stimulated echo removal using variable gradient spoiler reduced the temporal noise in CBF time series by 27%. (2) Improved slice profile using matched-phase RF pulse reduced the slice spacing to one third of the imaging slice thickness for near-contiguous multislice. (3) Timing optimization reduced the temporal noise by 34% due to increased SNR efficiency. (4) Off-resonance correction minimized blurring from spiral trajectory. These changes are expected to drastically improve the utility of VSASL for clinical studies.