Abstract #0853

Analysis of Calibrated BOLD Based Methods for Quantifying the Resting Oxygen Extraction Fraction

Nicholas P. Blockley¹, Valerie E M Griffeth², Peter Jezzard¹, Daniel P. Bulte¹

¹FMRIB, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; ²Center for Functional MRI, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States

The calibrated BOLD technique is conventionally used to quantify the BOLD response in terms of changes in oxygen metabolism. Recently such methods were extended to produce absolute measurements of the resting oxygen extraction fraction. However, the sensitivity of this new method to intersubject physiological variability, or to a breakdown of the physiological assumptions that underpin the method, has not been explored. In this work we show that this method is relatively insensitive to physiological variability, but reveal a potential systematic error in the current analysis approach.