Three‐dimensional whole‐brain mapping of cerebral blood volume and venous cerebral blood volume using Fourier transform–based velocity‐selective pulse trains

PURPOSE: To develop 3D MRI methods for cerebral blood volume (CBV) and venous cerebral blood volume (vCBV) estimation with whole-brain coverage using Fourier-transform based velocity-selective (FT-VS) pulse trains. METHODS: For CBV measurement, FT-VS saturation (FT-VSS) pulse trains were employed to suppress static tissue while CSF contamination was corrected voxel-by-voxel using a multi-readout acquisition and a fast CSF T(2) scan. The vCBV mapping was achieved by inserting an arterial-nulling module which included a FT-VS inversion (FT-VSI) pulse train. Using these methods, CBV and vCBV maps were obtained on six healthy volunteers at 3T. RESULTS: The mean CBV and vCBV values in gray matter and white matter in different areas of the brain showed high correlation (r = 0.95 and p < 0.0001). The averaged CBV and vCBV values of the whole-brain were 5.4±0.6 and 2.5±0.3 mL/100g in gray matter, and 2.6±0.5 and 1.5±0.2 mL/100g in white matter, respectively, comparable to the literature. CONCLUSION: The feasibility of FT-VS based CBV and vCBV estimation was demonstrated for 3D acquisition with large spatial coverage.