Marta Bianciardi1,
Karleyton C. Evans2, Jonathan R. Polimeni3, Tian Y.
Song2, Boris Keil3, Thomas Witzel3, Bruce R.
Rosen3, David A. Boas3, Lawrence L. Wald3
1Department
of Radiology, A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard
Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States; 2Department of
Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School,
Charlestown, MA, United States; 3Department of Radiology, A.A.
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States
The velocity of cardiac and respiratory pressure-waves traveling in the brain and the pressure-change are indicators of vessel elasticity and of cerebrospinal-fluid response to vascular compliance. Recent work showed the feasibility of mapping the propagation of the cardiac pressure-wave in the brain by echo-planar-imaging (EPI). We further investigated the cardiac and also the respiratory pressure-wave in the brain by high spatio-temporal-resolution EPI at 7Tesla. Our results show the feasibility of mapping within <30-45s/slice the arrival time and the bulk flow velocity change of each pressure-wave, which are respectively related to the velocity of the traveling wave and to the pressure-change.
Keywords