A pilot study to quantify hepatic perfusion using pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling in MRI

This study aimed at optimizing a pseudo-Continuous Arterial Spin Labeling (pCASL) approach to quantify hepatic perfusion in MRI. Six volunteers were examined using a 3T Siemens scanner, pCASL sequences with 4 and 20 repetitions were acquired in a plane orthogonal to portal vein with a post label delay (PLD) of 600 ms. For two subjects, four additional PLD (varying from 1000 to 1600 ms) were tested. Data were processed using specific software, which computes parametric maps of hepatic perfusion (HP). Global results show a more robust HP estimation when using 20 repetitions. The five PLD values provided hepatic perfusion weighted differently by the hepatic artery and the portal vein blood flows. This strategy could be used to estimate separately these two components.