Pulsatile brain tissue motion, driven by the cardiac cycle, is important for maintaining homeostatic processes in the brain, and increased pulsatility is linked to diseases such as dementia. In this study, we demonstrate the feasibility of measuring whole brain volumetric strain with 2 mm isotropic resolution at 7T MRI in 8 healthy volunteers. Maximum volumetric strain was (2.3 ± 1.5) x 10-3, and showed considerable inter-subject and inter-slice variability that was much larger than could be explained from intrinsic measurement errors as assessed from a gel phantom. This method has potential for studying the brain pulsatility in disease.
