Simultaneous SE-BOLD and T2* Measurement by Functional MRS of Water Signal

Peng Cao¹, ², Jevin W. Zhang¹, ², Victor B. Xie¹, ², Iris Y. Zhou¹, ², Ed X. Wu¹, ²

Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast is known to be modulated by vascular origins such as intravascular, extravascular, venular and capillary. The relative contributions of these factors to BOLD signal are dependent of magnetic field strength and whether spin echo or gradient echo detection is used. MRS voxel selective excitation method (e.g. PRESS) can measure the SE-BOLD (i.e., amplitude of SE BOLD signal) and T2* (i.e., the FID decay rate) directly simultaneously. With this approach, we simultaneously acquired SE-BOLD signals and T2* and quantitatively compared their characteristics.