Reinoud Pieter Harmen Bokkers1, Matthias
J.P. van Osch2, H Bart van der Worp3, Gert J. de Borst4,
Willem P Th M Mali1, Jeroen Hendrikse1
1Department of Radiology, UMCU,
Utrecht, Netherlands; 2Department of Radiology, LUMC, Leiden,
Netherlands; 3Department of Neurology, UMCU, Utrecht, Netherlands;
4Department of Vascular Surgery, UMCU, Utrecht, Netherlands
Patients
with a stenosis of the internal carotid artery have a high risk of ischemic
stroke. In these patients, impairment of the vasodilatory capacity of the
cerebral vasculature is an important measure of the degree of hemodynamic
compromise. The aim of our study was to measure the cerebral autoregulatory
status of the brain tissue supplied by the individual brain feeding arteries
using arterial spin labeling MRI and to compare this to healthy controls. Our
results show, that ASL is able to visualize and quantify the vasodilatory
capacity in the flow territories of the major cerebral arteries at brain
tissue level.