Real-Time Phase Contrast MRI to quantify Cerebral arterial flow change during variations breathing

TL;DR

This study utilizes real-time phase contrast MRI to quickly measure cerebral arterial blood flow changes during normal breathing, revealing significant flow variations between expiration and inspiration in healthy individuals.

Contribution

A novel time-domain analysis method was developed to quantify breathing effects on cerebral arterial blood flow parameters in real-time MRI data.

Findings

CABF flow rate increases by 4.4% during expiration

Stroke volume of CABF increases by 9.8% during expiration

Cardiac period duration increases by 8.1% during expiration

Abstract

Cerebral arterial blood flow (CABF) can be investigated in few seconds without any synchronization by Real-Time phase contrast. Significant changes in CABF were found between expiration and inspiration during normal breathing of healthy volunteers. Synopsis (100/100) Real-time phase contrast MRI has been applied to investigate cerebral arterial blood flow (CABF) during normal breathing of healthy volunteers. We developed a novel time-domain analysis method to quantify the effect of normal breathing on several parameters of CABF. We found the existence of a delay between the recorded respiratory signal from the belt sensor and the breathing frequency component present in the reconstructed arterial blood flows. During the expiratory, the mean flow rate of CABF increased by 4.4$\pm$1.7%, stroke volume of CABF increased by 9.8$\pm$3.1% and the duration of the cardiac period of CABF increased by 8.1$\pm$3%.