Lori Jordan1, Melissa Gindville1, Allison Scott1, Meher Juttukonda1, Megan Strother1, Adetola Kassim1, Sheau-Chiann Chen1, Hanzhang Lu2, Sumit Pruthi1, Yu Shyr1, and Manus J. Donahue1
1Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, 2Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States
The
goal of this work is to apply hemo-metabolic MRI to evaluate relationships
between oxygen extraction fraction (OEF), cerebral blood flow (CBF), and
clinical impairment in adults with sickle cell anemia (SCA). Healthy (n=11) and
sickle cell anemia (n=34) participants received neurological evaluation, head/neck-angiography,
structural-MRI, CBF-weighted-MRI, and T2-relaxation-under-spin-tagging (TRUST)-MRI. CBF and OEF were
elevated (P<0.05) in SCA relative
to control participants; OEF (P<0.0001)
but not CBF was increased in SCA participants with higher clinical impairment. Data
provide support for TRUST-MRI being able to quickly and noninvasively detect
elevated OEF in SCA participants with high levels of clinical impairment.