Assessment of cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen using magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is still characterized by rapid scientific development, especially in the fields of quantitative and physiological imaging. This requires advanced MRI physics methodology, post-processing and analysis tools, as well as appropriate validation.
All proposed research tasks will benefit from the national 7T MRI facility in Lund. Dynamic contrast agent (CA) methods, e.g., dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) MRI, are useful for assessment of cerebral perfusion parameters. Magnetic susceptibility is proportional to the concentration of gadolinium CAs and is also dependent on blood oxygen saturation levels. Hence, quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), based on measured MRI phase, will be applied to perfusion imaging as well as to oxygen consumption monitoring. Arterial spin labelling (ASL) is a non-invasive cerebral blood flow technique, and this project includes validation of non-compartment models for capillary water transfer. Work on non-invasive blood volume biomarkers to supplement ASL will continue. Perfusion and/or oxygen metabolism methods are of clinical relevance in, e.g., stroke, dementia, Parkinson´s disease, schizophrenia, neurointerventional procedures, multiple sclerosis, tumours and for understanding heart-brain circulation relationships. A particularly important clinical field is brain injury (traumatic, ischemic and hemorrhagic), where maintenance of brain perfusion and oxygenation is of utmost importance to patient outcome.