Arterial spin labelling (ASL) MRI is a useful clinical method of measuring blood flow in brain disorders such as tumours. This work presents a pre-clinical assessment of cerebral blood flow (CBF) by pseudo-continuous ASL in progressing rat breast cancer brain metastases. A statistically significant decrease in CBF of brain metastases was readily observed when tumours had grown sufficiently to breach the blood brain barrier, allowing gadolinium enhancement in T1-weighted images. Upon histological analysis, the brain metastases proved to be hypoxic, consistent with a reduction in CBF in those regions.
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