We demonstrate that cardiac-induced pulsatile flow-related signal enhancement in fast EPI provides a dynamic assessment of cerebrovascular function in the brain’s large feeding arteries. We show that cardiac pulsatile waveforms, derived from magnitude data taken at the site of the middle cerebral artery, are attenuated at longer TRs, suggesting they are related to pulsatile flow rather than volume changes. The same waveforms are modulated by a global flow-increasing hypercapnic challenge, showing that this endogenous signal contrast can be useful for exploring dynamic cerebrovascular function. We propose that a multi-shot segmented EPI approach will further increase this signal contrast.
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