ASL perfusion

MRI · reads

Arterial spin labeling is an MRI technique that uses radiofrequency inversion to magnetically tag water in the subject's own arterial blood as a tracer. After a delay that lets the tagged blood flow into brain tissue, an image is taken and subtracted from an untagged control image. This removes the large static-tissue signal and isolates the small signal from blood delivered by perfusion. The difference becomes a map of cerebral blood flow in absolute units (mL per 100 g of tissue per minute), with no injected contrast agent.

Spatial resolution

5 mm (point spread)

Temporal resolution

5.7 s (sample interval)

Field of view

1.23 L (acquired volume)

Reads

cerebral blood flow (CBF)

Destructive?

non-destructive

Prerequisites

none beyond ordinary participation

Theoretical spatial resolution

470 µm (point spread)

Theoretical temporal resolution

250 ms (sample interval)

Theoretical field of view

1.23 L (reachable envelope)

Description

ASL is noninvasive perfusion MRI that uses RF pulses to label arterial blood water as an endogenous tracer. After the labeled blood flows in, subtracting the labeled image from an unlabeled control suppresses static-tissue signal, leaving the signal of labeled blood delivered by perfusion. This is quantified as cerebral blood flow in absolute units of mL/100 g/min.

Download the dataset (JSON, described by its JSON Schema).

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