Xiang He1, Chan-Hong Moon1, Serter Gumus1, Ayaz Aghayev1, JinHong Wang1, Dmitriy A. Yablonskiy2, Kyongtae Ty Bae1
1Department of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; 2Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, United States
The objective of this study is a non-invasive quantification of arteriole oxygenation in human brain in the baseline state and during functional activation. We applied a recently proposed MR-based ASL-qBOLD technique to investigate T2* decay profile of ASL water signal originated from large feeding arteries and small arteries/arterioles. Our data demonstrate a gradual decrease of arteriole blood oxygenation approaching capillaries. We found that in arterioles the mean blood oxygen saturation was 86.93.4%. During visual stimulation, no significant change of arteriole blood oxygenation was detected, which is consistent with the results reported in previous studies using invasive methods in rodent models.
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