Spinal cord microperfusion assessment in human is challenging but would greatly help characterize tissue integrity and surgery decision-making. Intra-Voxel Incoherent Motion (IVIM) microperfusion measurement is promising but remains highly Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) demanding. Monte-Carlo simulations show that IVIM two-step segmented fitting approach is less accurate than directly fitting the bi-exponential representation to all b-values. Simulations also help quantify required SNR and estimation errors to measure IVIM parameters in the context of low perfusion. Exploiting 7T SNR gain, large number of repetitions and group average, IVIM was able to unveil the gray matter higher microperfusion-related pattern, compared to white matter, in agreement with brain studies.
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