No abstract

Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) or arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI with hypercapnic stimuli allow for measuring cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR). Hypercapnic stimuli are also employed in calibrated BOLD functional MRI for quantifying neuronally-evoked changes in cerebral oxygen metabolism (CMRO2). It is often assumed that hypercapnic stimuli (with or without hyperoxia) are iso-metabolic; increasing arterial CO2 or O2 does not affect CMRO2. We evaluated the null hypothesis that two common hypercapnic stimuli, ‘CO2 in air’ and carbogen, are iso-metabolic. TRUST and ASL MRI were used to measure the cerebral venous oxygenation and cerebral blood flow (CBF), from which the oxygen extraction fraction (OEF) and CMRO2 were calculated for room-air, ‘CO2 in air’ and carbogen. As expected, CBF significantly increased (9.9% ± 9.3% and 12.1% ± 8.8% for ‘CO2 in air’ and carbogen, respectively). CMRO2 decreased for ‘CO2 in air’ (−13.4% ± 13.0%, p < 0.01) compared to room-air, while the CMRO2 during carbogen did not significantly change. Our findings indicate that ‘CO2 in air’ is not iso-metabolic, while carbogen appears to elicit a mixed effect; the CMRO2 reduction during hypercapnia is mitigated when including hyperoxia. These findings can be important for interpreting measurements using hypercapnic or hypercapnic-hyperoxic (carbogen) stimuli.

Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is a non-invasive and cost-effective MRI technique for brain perfusion measurements. While it has developed into a robust technique for scientific and clinical use, its image processing can still be daunting. The 2019 Ann Arbor ISMRM ASL working group established that education is one of the main areas that can accelerate the use of ASL in research and clinical practice. Specifically, the post-acquisition processing of ASL images and their preparation for region-of-interest or voxel-wise statistical analyses is a topic that has not yet received much educational attention. This educational review is aimed at those with an interest in ASL image processing and analysis. We provide summaries of all typical ASL processing steps on both single-subject and group levels. The readers are assumed to have a basic understanding of cerebral perfusion (patho) physiology; a basic level of programming or image analysis is not required. Starting with an introduction of the physiology and MRI technique behind ASL, and how they interact with the image processing, we present an overview of processing pipelines and explain the specific ASL processing steps. Example video and image illustrations of ASL studies of different cases, as well as model calculations, help the reader develop an understanding of which processing steps to check for their own analyses. Some of the educational content can be extrapolated to the processing of other MRI data. We anticipate that this educational review will help accelerate the application of ASL MRI for clinical brain research.