Michael Germuska1,
Daniel P. Bulte2
1Nuffield
Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford , Oxford,
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom; 2Nuffield Department of Clinical
Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
BOLD mediated vessel size imaging (VSI) is preformed in the brainstem. Two different acquisition strategies, dual-echo and multi-echo EPI (MESSER), are compared with and without cardiac gating. The dual-echo acquisition scheme is found to outperform the multi-echo strategy. Both gated acquisitions show an improved performance, as measured by VSI fitting residuals, compared to non-gated acquisitions. The robust performance and small fitting residuals of the gated dual-echo sequence suggests it can be a useful tool for assessing vascular changes in the brainstem.