Brain vasculature is conventionally represented as straight cylinders when simulating BOLD contrast effects in fMRI. In reality, the vasculature is more complicated with branching and coiling especially in tumors. We applied a cylinder fork model to reflect the bifurcation, rotations, and size of vessels and performed simulations to study the effect of the rotation angle (ϕ) on R2 at different bifurcation angles, vessel diameters, diffusion rates, and susceptibility values. This model clearly showed an R2 dependence on ϕ, which could potentially be used, in addition to R2*, as a tool to differentiate between normal and tumor vessels.
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