Mapping of Intra-Renal Oxygenation by Quantitative BOLD

Xiang He¹, Ayaz Aghayev¹, Serter Gumus¹, Dmitriy A. Yablonskiy², Kyongtae Ty Bae¹

While a semi-qualitative MR BOLD effect (R2*) has been widely adopted to assess intra-renal oxygenation, the underlying biophysical mechanism associating between hemodynamic parameters and renal BOLD effect (R2*) has not been established. In this study, a theoretical and experimental framework for MR-based quantitative BOLD (qBOLD) technique was investigated to measure absolute intra-renal blood oxygenation. A 2D GEPCI (Gradient Echo Plural Contrast Imaging) pulse sequence was used to measure T2* decay of renal MR signal. Our proposed renal-qBOLD method allows us to quantitatively assess regional renal blood oxygenation in the baseline state and under a renal physiological challenge.