Blood Contrast Agent Concentration Measured by Dynamic MRI in Intra- And Extracranial Mouse Vessels at

Melanie Heilmann¹, Hanne Boll², Sebastian J. Schambach², Christoph Groden², Marc A. Brockmann², Lothar R. Schad¹

Quantitative dynamic MRI requires knowledge of contrast agent (CA) concentration in blood. Due to the small size of murine vessels, so far an arterial input function (AIF) has only been measured in mouse hearts. Using a novel cryogenic probe at 9.4 T, we measured CA kinetics in intra- and extracranial vessels. Although high inter-individual variations were observed, in average, kinetics of the superficial temporal vein provided good estimates for blood CA concentration. Smaller vessels suffered from partial volume effects but were less prone to inter-individual variations. Whether mouse perfusion studies benefit from vessel-based AIFs, remains to be studied in future.