In Vivo Arterial Blood T2 Measurement with Arterial Spin Labeling at 9.4 Tesla

Yuguang Meng¹, Alberto Vazquez¹, Seong-gi Kim¹

Cortical arterial oxygen saturation level is lower than the systemic level and can increase during stimulation. In previous oxygen tension measurements of pial arterial vessels, an arterial oxygen saturation level of ~85% was observed, which is much less than systemic levels (near 100%). T₂ is sensitive to the blood oxygen saturation and can be used to determine the baseline arterial oxygen saturation level, which can be an important physiological parameter. In this work, continuous arterial spin labeling was used to isolate arterial blood signals and measure the arterial blood T₂ value of isoflurane-anesthetized rats at 9.4 T.