Petros Martirosian1, Rolf Pohmann2, Christina Schraml3, Holger Schmidt3, Nina F Schwenzer3, Martin Schwartz1, Klaus Scheffler2, Konstantin Nikolaou3, and Fritz Schick1
1Section on Experimental Radiology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, 2Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 3Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
The
separation of portal-venous and hepatic arterial blood supply is important for the
evaluation of chronic liver diseases and the characterization of liver lesions.
The aim of this study was to investigate the capability of a pseudo-continuous
arterial spin labeling sequence, to separate arterial and portal venous
perfusion of the liver using a background suppression technique and different
tagging plane orientations. It was demonstrated that the presented method provides
high quality perfusion images of the liver without application of intravenous
contrast agent and offers promising approaches for the separation of arterial
and portal-venous perfusion fractions.