Peiying Liu1, Yan Cao2, Jinsoo Uh1, Hanzhang Lu1
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 2Department of Mathematical Science, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, United States
CMRO2 is an important index of tissue viability and brain function. A previous study proposed an MRI technique to estimate whole-brain CMRO2 by combining non-invasive measures of CBF, arterial and venous oxygenation, which is fast and reliable. The only major obstacle of this technique before wider applications is the slice positioning of the phase-contrast MRI scans for CBF measurement requires considerable training and expertise. We developed an automatic positioning algorithm for the phase-contrast MRI based on image analysis of a time-of-flight angiogram, and thus provide a turn-key solution for the quantitative evaluation of the whole-brain CMRO2, which has minimal operator-dependence.