Abstract #3766

R1 and R2 characterization of human blood with phase-cycled balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP)

Marlon Pérez-Rodas^1,2, Hildegard Schulz¹, Rolf Pohmann¹, Klaus Scheffler^1,3, and Rahel Heule¹

¹High-Field MR Center, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, ²Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience, IMPRS for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, ³Department of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) sequences have received increased interest for functional BOLD experiments since, in contrast to conventional EPI-based techniques, they are not prone to geometric distortions in the phase encoding direction. Characterization of measured BOLD signal changes requires consideration of extravascular as well as intravascular contributions. Knowledge about the relaxation rates of human blood is a prerequisite to quantify the intravascular contribution to the BOLD effect. Here, R₁ and R₂ relaxation rates of blood samples are intrinsically obtained from a series of phase-cycled bSSFP scans to account for the repetition time dependence of R₂ due to rapid refocusing.

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