AUTHOR=Vu Chau , Xu Botian , González-Zacarías Clio , Shen Jian , Baas Koen P. A. , Choi Soyoung , Nederveen Aart J. , Wood John C. 

TITLE=Sinusoidal CO2 respiratory challenge for concurrent perfusion and cerebrovascular reactivity MRI

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physiology

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2023.1102983

DOI=10.3389/fphys.2023.1102983

ISSN=1664-042X

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Introduction:</bold> Deoxygenation-based dynamic susceptibility contrast (dDSC) has previously leveraged respiratory challenges to modulate blood oxygen content as an endogenous source of contrast alternative to gadolinium injection in perfusion-weighted MRI. This work proposed the use of sinusoidal modulation of end-tidal CO<sub>2</sub> pressures (<italic>SineCO</italic><sub><italic>2</italic></sub>), which has previously been used to measure cerebrovascular reactivity, to induce susceptibility-weighted gradient-echo signal loss to measure brain perfusion.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold><italic>SineCO</italic><sub><italic>2</italic></sub> was performed in 10 healthy volunteers (age 37 ± 11, 60% female), and tracer kinetics model was applied in the frequency domain to calculate cerebral blood flow, cerebral blood volume, mean transit time, and temporal delay. These perfusion estimates were compared against reference techniques, including gadolinium-based DSC, arterial spin labeling, and phase contrast.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> Our results showed regional agreement between <italic>SineCO</italic><sub><italic>2</italic></sub> and the clinical comparators. <italic>SineCO</italic><sub><italic>2</italic></sub> was able to generate robust CVR maps in conjunction to baseline perfusion estimates.</p><p><bold>Discussion:</bold> Overall, this work demonstrated feasibility of using sinusoidal CO<sub>2</sub> respiratory paradigm to simultaneously acquire both cerebral perfusion and cerebrovascular reactivity maps in one imaging sequence.</p>