Noninvasive assessment of arterial compliance of human cerebral arteries with short inversion time arterial spin labeling

A noninvasive method of assessing cerebral arterial compliance (AC) is introduced in which arterial spin labeling (ASL) is used to measure changes in arterial blood volume (aBV) occurring within the cardiac cycle. Short inversion time pulsed ASL (PASL) was performed in healthy volunteers with inversion times ranging from 250 to 850 ms. A model of the arterial input function was used to obtain the cerebral aBV. Results indicate that aBV depends on the cardiac phase of the arteries in the imaging volume. Cerebral AC, estimated from aBV and brachial blood pressure measured noninvasively in systole and diastole, was assessed in the flow territories of the basal cerebral arteries originating from the circle of Willis: right and left middle cerebral arteries (RMCA and LMCA), right and left posterior cerebral arteries (RPCA and LPCA), and the anterior cerebral artery (ACA). Group average AC values calculated for the RMCA, LMCA, ACA, RPCA, and LPCA were 0.56%±0.2%, 0.50%±0.3%, 0.4%±0.2%, 1.1%±0.5%, and 1.1%±0.3% per mm Hg, respectively. The current experiment has shown the feasibility of measuring AC of cerebral arteries with short inversion time PASL.