Imaging the Fragile Brain: Using BOLD Signal Fluctuations to Study Perfusion in Normal Subjects and Patients with Cerebrovascular Disease

Thomas Christen¹, Deqiang Qiu¹, Wendy W. Ni¹, Michael E. Moseley¹, Greg Zaharchuk¹

In this work, we acquired resting state BOLD image data in normal subjects and patients with cerebrovascular disease to study brain perfusion. The signal was analysed in two ways: (1) we looked at the amplitude of the fluctuations after high pass filtering of the signal, and (2) we looked at the correlation between the MR signal in major blood vessels (such as the sagittal sinus) and the rest of the brain. These maps demonstrated similar characteristics to CBF and CBV but did not require contrast.