Real-time MR elastography (rt-MRE) with 4.9Hz-frame rate was developed for in-vivo brain stiffness quantification during short-term tissue mechanical adaptation due to cerebral autoregulation. Six healthy participants performed a 15s-Valsalva maneuver with 50s recovery period following 10s resting period and 5s deep inspiration during continuous rt-MRE. 387 maps of tissue stiffness and fluidity were generated depicting a significant increase of stiffness due to Valsalva and an overshoot of stiffness by 3.4% fading out within 7s after the maneuver. rt-MRE is potentially sensitive to several diseases associated with cerebral autoregulation and reveals new insights into brain viscoelasticity changes on short time scales.
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