Pseudocontinuous Arterial Spin Labeling (pCASL) at Very High Field (11.75T) for Mouse Brain Perfusion Imaging

Guillaume Duhamel¹, Mohamed Tachrount¹, Patrick J. Cozzone¹, David C. Alsop², Virginie Callot¹

Despite the use of high field, improvements of MR sequences for small animal studies are still required to obtain high spatial resolution images. The recent pCASL technique might be the best candidate for mouse brain perfusion since it overcomes the main limitations of CASL while giving higher efficiency than PASL. However, at very high field, pCASL could be challenged by a loss of the inversion efficiency caused by increased B1 and B0 inhomogeneities. This work presents the development of pCASL techniques at very high field (11.75T) and their performances relatively to a PASL sequence fully optimized for mouse brain perfusion.