Lennart Geurts1, Sander Brinkhof1, Peter R. Luijten1, and Jaco J.M. Zwanenburg1
Because
cerebral perforating arteries have sub-millimeter diameters and slow blood flow
velocities, their blood flow velocity and pulsatility measurements are
challenging and limited by noise and partial volume effects. Our previously
reported acquisition method used two signal averages (NSA) to increase the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We show that decreasing NSA, and thereby reducing
scan time by half, has little effect on vessel detection. The NSA=1 coefficients
of repeatability (CoR) found in this study are similar to previously published
NSA=2 CoR`s. Subject motion and small vessel size likely play together to cause
a sub-optimal benefit from increased imaging time.
