查看文章

Abnormal cerebral blood flow (CBF) is implicated in several neonatal and infant diseases. However, measurement of CBF in this population remains difficult and has not been used in routine clinical MRI. Arterial spin labeling (ASL) methods suffer from both low SNR and poor quantification when applied to very young children. Furthermore, rapid change in brain physiology in this age range makes it difficult to choose sequence parameters such as labeling pulse flip angle and post labeling delay. Phase-contrast (PC) MRI is another approach to measure flow. It provides fast and reliable global CBF assessment, and has great promises in pediatric applications. In this study, we aimed to apply PC-MRI technique for CBF quantification in neonates and infants up to 18 months of age. We first compared several implementations of time-of-flight (TOF) MR angiogram for the visualization of brain's feeding arteries, which …