Clinical assessment of brain perfusion in newborn infants with arterial spin labeling perfusion MRI

INTRODUCTION. Many approaches have been applied to evaluate brain perfusion in neonates: brain ultrasound, near-infrared spectroscopy, and positron emission tomography (PET). However perfusion weighted imaging (PWI) MRI has been shown to enable in vivo direct measurements of brain perfusion in different brain regions. Recent advances have lead to the development of non-contrast agent based Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) PWI. ASL-PWI relies upon the magnetic labeling of incoming blood flow to provide a change in contrast on the order of 1-2% that is proportional to the amount of perfusion present. This technique has been applied to study brain perfusion of older children [1-2], but only very limited data exists in neonates [3] because of the technical and clinical challenges to obtain sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with spatial resolution sufficient to resolve cortical gray matter and white matter and basal ganglia in neonates. Our study assesses brain perfusion patterns of normal term newborn infants using an ASL-PWI MRI sequence, and compares regional cerebral blood flow measurements to data previously described [3-5].