Cervical spinal cord angiography and vessel-selective perfusion imaging in the rat. NMR Biomed 2024 Jun;37(6):e5115
Date
02/15/2024Pubmed ID
38355219Pubmed Central ID
PMC11078600DOI
10.1002/nbm.5115Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85185526294 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)Abstract
Arterial spin labeling (ASL) has been widely used to evaluate arterial blood and perfusion dynamics, particularly in the brain, but its application to the spinal cord has been limited. The purpose of this study was to optimize vessel-selective pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) for angiographic and perfusion imaging of the rat cervical spinal cord. A pCASL preparation module was combined with a train of gradient echoes for dynamic angiography. The effects of the echo train flip angle, label duration, and a Cartesian or radial readout were compared to examine their effects on visualizing the segmental arteries and anterior spinal artery (ASA) that supply the spinal cord. Lastly, vessel-selective encoding with either vessel-encoded pCASL (VE-pCASL) or super-selective pCASL (SS-pCASL) were compared. Vascular territory maps were obtained with VE-pCASL perfusion imaging of the spinal cord, and the interanimal variability was evaluated. The results demonstrated that longer label durations (200 ms) resulted in greater signal-to-noise ratio in the vertebral arteries, improved the conspicuity of the ASA, and produced better quality maps of blood arrival times. Cartesian and radial readouts demonstrated similar image quality. Both VE-pCASL and SS-pCASL adequately labeled the right or left vertebral arteries, which revealed the interanimal variability in the segmental artery with variations in their location, number, and laterality. VE-pCASL also demonstrated unique interanimal variations in spinal cord perfusion with a right-sided dominance across the six animals. Vessel-selective pCASL successfully achieved visualization of the arterial inflow dynamics and corresponding perfusion territories of the spinal cord. These methodological developments provide unique insights into the interanimal variations in the arterial anatomy and dynamics of spinal cord perfusion.
Author List
Lee S, Schmit BD, Kurpad SN, Budde MDAuthors
Matthew Budde PhD Associate Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of WisconsinShekar N. Kurpad MD, PhD Chair, Director, Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Brian Schmit PhD Professor in the Biomedical Engineering department at Marquette University
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AnimalsCervical Cord
Magnetic Resonance Angiography
Male
Perfusion Imaging
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Spin Labels
Spinal Cord
