Physiologically informed Bayesian analysis of ASL fMRI data

ASL fMRI data provides a quantitative measure of blood perfusion, that can be correlated to neuronal activation. In contrast to BOLD measure, it is a direct measure of cerebral blood flow. However, ASL data has a lower SNR and resolution so that the recovery of the perfusion response of interest suffers from the contamination by a stronger BOLD component in the ASL signal. In this work we consider a model of both BOLD and perfusion components within the ASL signal. A physiological link between these two components is analyzed and used for a more accurate estimation of the perfusion response function in particular in the usual ASL low SNR conditions.