Abstract

OBJECT: Dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI (DSC-MRI) is increasingly being used to evaluate cerebral microcirculation. In this study, the use of the analytic image reconstruction (AIR), with the aim to increase the temporal resolution, is evaluated for DSC-MRI in small animals.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Imaging was performed using a T (2)*- weighted sequence to acquire male Lewis rats raw data. Results show that AIR satisfactory reconstructs DSC-MRI while preserving a good reconstruction quality and the image characteristics compared to the full k-space and keyhole reconstructed images. The combination of the choice of the baseline image and the proposed asymmetric acquisition schema enables an increase in temporal resolution, by a factor of four, thus having more sample points for better estimating perfusion parameters.

RESULTS: Computer simulations result in a mean cerebral blood volume of 1.22 that deviates from the full k-space value by -3% and a mean cerebral blood flow of 1.97 deviating from the full k-space value by -3% when the mean transit time did not change. Even if these deviations increase when achieving real acquisitions, AIR still better computes quantitative values than keyhole.

CONCLUSION: AIR allows a good reconstruction of the dynamic stage of the image series thus leading to better dynamic effects analysis.