Model-Based Registration for Motion Correction of Inversion Recovery & Multiple-Time Point Renal ASL

Mark Stephen Dobbs^1,2, Neil Woodhouse³, Geoff J. M. Parker^1,2, Josephine H. Naish^1,2

There has been increasing interest in applying perfusion measurement techniques, such as Arterial Spin Labelling (ASL), to the kidneys in light of concerns over the link between gadolinium-bearing contrast agents and nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF). Correction or avoidance of breathing-induced motion artefacts in the kidneys is beneficial. Recent work has shown that multiple-time point and multiple phase approaches for ASL can aid renal perfusion quantification by extracting the bolus arrival time (the time for labelled blood to reach the renal tissue), which itself may have clinical relevance. When combining a multiple-time point approach with presaturation, there are large contrast differences in the raw ASL images at different inversion times (TIs), relative to the ASL signal, which makes registration problematic. This is also a problem for inversion recovery (IR) sequences applied to the kidneys. In this abstract we demonstrate the feasibility of a model-based registration approach, based on the T1-recovery of signal intensities, for registration of multiple-time point ASL and IR sequences applied to the kidneys.