Wendy W. Ni1, 2, Deqiang Qiu1, Thomas Christen1, Heiko Schmiedeskamp1, Roland Bammer1, Michael E. Moseley1, Greg Zaharchuk1
1Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States; 2Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
In this study, we describe our initial human experience with brain perfusion imaging using the ultrasmall paramagnetic iron oxide (USPIO) ferumoxytol as a T2* agent in steady state. We found that both ΔR2* and ΔR2 have strong linear dependence on dosage, and that the effect of ferumoxytol on T2 decay is relatively small. We also demonstrated the use of saline as a dilution bolus following ferumoxytol injection to measure relative cerebral blood volume in humans, finding low SNR and physiological effects to be the main issues in this technique.