Variance of time-of-flight distribution is sensitive to cerebral blood flow as demonstrated by ICG bolus-tracking measurements in adult pigs

Variance of time-of-flight distributions have been shown to be more sensitive to cerebral blood flow (CBF) during dynamic-contrast enhanced monitoring of neurotrauma patients than attenuation. What is unknown is the degree to which variance is affected by changes in extracerebral blood flow. Furthermore, the importance of acquiring the arterial input function (AIF) on quantitative analysis of the data is not yet clear. This animal study confirms that variance is both sensitive and specific to changes occurring in the brain when measurements are acquired on the surface of the scalp. Furthermore, when the variance data along with the measured AIF is analyzed using a nonparametric deconvolution method, the recovered change in CBF is in good agreement with CT perfusion values.