Magnetic resonance in medicine : official journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
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The mechanism behind previously observed changes in the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) during brain activation is not well understood. Therefore, we investigated the signal source and spatial specificity of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) ADC changes systematically in the visual cortex of cats using diffusion-weighted (DW) spin-echo (SE) fMRI with b-values of 2, 200, and 800 s/mm(2), and echo times (TE) of 16, 28, and 60 ms at 9.4 T. For b > or = 200 s/mm(2), no ADC changes were detected in brain parenchyma, suggesting a minimal tissue contribution to the ADC change. ⋯ At TE = 16 ms, the highest ADC changes occurred at the cortical surface with its large draining veins, which can mainly be explained by an additional contribution from the venous blood oxygenation changes. Our TE-dependent ADC results agree with computer simulations based on a three-compartment model. The contribution of arterial blood volume changes in ADC fMRI offers an improvement in spatial localization for SE-BOLD fMRI studies.