Arterial Spin Labelling Characterisation of Renal Medullary Perfusion

Philip M. Robson¹, David C. Alsop¹

Arterial spin labelling (ASL) has recently been used for measuring renal perfusion. Perfusion is highest in the renal cortex, but the outer medulla is the most prone to hypoxic injury. Accurate quantification of outer medullary perfusion can be complicated by partial volume averaging with cortical signal and by loss of label in the cortex before transit to the medulla. Here we evaluate high resolution ASL MRI with different labelling strategies to assess the feasibility of quantifying outer medullary perfusion with ASL.