• Ke Zhang, Volker J Sturm, Lukas R Buschle, Artur Hahn, Seong Dae Yun, Jon ShahNNInstitute of Neuroscience and Medicine 4, Medical Imaging Physics, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany,; Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, JARA, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany., Martin Bendszus, Sabine Heiland, Heinz-Peter Schlemmer, Christian H Ziener, and Felix T Kurz.
• Department of Neuroradiology, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany; Department of Radiology, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany.
• Magn Reson Imaging. 2019 Apr 1; 57: 359-367.

AbstractA 2D gradient-echo EPI is commonly employed for arterial spin labeling (ASL) readout to achieve fast whole brain coverage measurements. However, such a readout suffers from susceptibility artifacts induced by magnetic field inhomogeneities. To reduce these susceptibility effects, single-shot spin-echo EPI was proposed to be used for acquisitions in continuous ASL (CASL). To minimize functional and physiological variations, a gradient-echo (GE)/spin-echo (SE) dual-echo EPI readout of the CASL sequence is needed for a comparison between GE- and SE-based determination of cerebral blood flow (CBF). In this study, we employed a simultaneous GE/SE multiband EPI as the readout of a pseudo-CASL (pCASL) sequence. Motor cortex activations derived from a finger-tapping task and functional networks from resting state fMRI were compared for both GE and SE contrasts. Direct comparison of SE and GE contrasts revealed that GE ASL provides an improved sensitivity of functional activity in finger-tapping and in resting-state imaging. SE ASL, on the other hand, suffered less from susceptibility artifacts induced by magnetic field inhomogeneities and pulsatile flow artifacts.Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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