Xiaoqi Wang1, Alexander L. Sukstanskii2, Dmitriy A. Yablonskiy1, 2
1Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States; 2Department of Radiology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States
Recently introduced qBOLD technique allows quantitative estimate of brain tissue hemodynamic parameters such as deoxygenated blood volume and oxygen extraction fraction. The technique is based on a two extravascular compartment model of MR signal (intra- and extra-cellular) in the presence of blood vessel network and a gradient echo sampling of spin echo (GESSE) sequence for data acquisition. At the same time numerous publications treat BOLD signal in the framework of a single compartment model which can introduce bias if quantitative results are needed. In this work we present direct experimental evidence supporting two extravascular compartments contribution to the BOLD signal.