Anatomical and ASL Imaging of the Retina at 7 T

Daniel James Lee¹, Ehsan Vaghefi², Kevin F. Webb, Alexander J E Foss³, Richard W. Bowtell¹, Susan T. Francis¹

Using a dedicated receive coil and the high signal-to-noise of a 7 T system, high resolution anatomical images of the human eye have been obtained in vivo. Perfusion images showing retinal blood flow were acquired using a FAIR ASL scheme with a TurboFLASH readout across a range of post-label delay times (TI) , showing largest perfusion signals at the longest TI used here (1550 ms), with average baseline perfusion of 104 41 ml/100 mL/min . Perfusion changes in response to 8 Hz visual stimulation were measured and a 61 % increase in retinal perfusion is detected.