Purpose: The multiband (MB) excitation and reconstruction technique was both developed and evaluated for accelerated data acquisition of arterial spin labeling (ASL) to cover whole brain perfusion maps.
Theory and methods: MB excitation was incorporated into a pulsed ASL (PASL) technique and compared with conventional single-band excitation PASL from healthy subjects, using a 32-channel head receiver coil at 3 T. The MB de-aliasing performance and effectiveness in perfusion measurement were measured with varying MB acceleration factors and gaps between MB excitations.
Results: The MB PASL perfusion maps were in good agreement with the conventional single-band PASL maps at matched slices. The imaging coverage could be effectively extended with the MB technique by a factor up to 5. A gap as small as 3 cm between MB excitations resulted in a comparable ASL signal loss and temporal-signal-to-noise ratio with single-band PASL.
Conclusion: The MB ASL technique is an effective method to evaluate whole brain perfusion because it minimizes the temporal spread of labeled spins across slices, resulting in more accurate perfusion measurements.
Keywords: arterial spin labeling; cerebral blood flow; multiband; multislice; perfusion; simultaneous multislice (SMS) acquisition; whole brain.
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