Christian Federau1,
Kieran O'Brien2, Markus Mller3, Matthias Stuber1,
4, Reto Meuli1, Philippe Maeder1, Patric Hagmann1
1Radiology,
CHUV, Lausanne, VD, Switzerland; 2CIBM, Universit de Genve,
Lausanne, VD, Switzerland; 3The Abdus Salam International Center
for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy; 4CIBM, Lausanne, VD,
Switzerland
We present evidence that the IVIM perfusion parameters (f, the perfusion fraction, D*, the pseudo-diffusion coefficient, and fD*, which is related to blood flow) depend on the cardiac cycle in the human brain, while the diffusion coefficient was found to be stable. This represents direct experimental evidence of pulsatile flow in the human brain microvasculature and correlates well with recently reported measurement of pulsatile blood flow in the microvasculature of the cortex of the mice brain by Santisakultarm et al (Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, 2012) using two-photon microscopy.