Longitudinal Study of Cerebral Blood Flow Measurements in Normals Using Pseudocontinuous and Velocity-Selective Arterial Spin Labeling

Zungho Zun¹, Deqiang Qiu¹, Jarrett Rosenberg¹, Greg Zaharchuk¹

Arterial spin labeling (ASL) allows for quantitative measurements of cerebral blood flow (CBF), enabling longitudinal observation of CBF in the same subjects. In this work, monthly CBF measurements were performed in five normal volunteers for six months using pseudocontinuous ASL (PCASL) and velocity-selective arterial spin labeling (VSASL). Global CBF measurement of gray matter for six months was, on average, 61 5 ml/100 g /min with PCASL and 44 4 ml/100 g/min with VSASL. While CBF measurement with PCASL showed good agreement with literature values, both methods showed similar coefficient of variation.