title: Quantitative measurement of spinal cord blood volume in humans using vascular-space-occupancy MRI.
abstract: Although perfusion is of major interest for many spinal cord disorders, there is no established, reproducible technique for evaluating blood flow or blood volume of the spinal cord in humans. Here the first report of in vivo measurement of human spinal cord blood volume (scBV) is presented. An FDA-approved contrast agent, Gd-DTPA, was used as an intravascular agent for the cord parenchyma, and pre-/post-contrast vascular-space-occupancy (VASO) MRI experiments were performed to obtain a quantitative estimation of scBV in mL blood/100 mL tissue. VASO MRI was used because it does not rely on knowledge of an arterial input function, it avoids the imaging artifacts of single-shot echo planar imaging approaches, and it requires only relatively simple and direct calculations for scBV quantification. Preliminary tests at 1.5 T and 3 T gave mean +/- SD scBV values of 4.3 +/- 0.7 ml/100 mL tissue (n = 6) and 4.4 +/- 0.7 ml/100 mL tissue (n = 4), respectively, consistent with the expectation that the scBV values would not be field-dependent.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA. Hanzhang.lu@utsouthwestern.edu
authors.forename: Hanzhang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Meng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Law
authors.forename: Yulin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ge
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Hesseltine
authors.forename: Otto
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rapalino
authors.forename: Jens H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Jensen
authors.forename: Joseph A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Helpern
mesh_terms: D001810:Blood Volume; D003287:Contrast Media / Q000378:metabolism; D019786:Gadolinium DTPA / Q000378:metabolism; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012039:Regional Blood Flow; D013116:Spinal Cord / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media; D019786:Gadolinium DTPA