Abstract

MRI investigation of the dynamic functional response of the peripheral microvasculature can yield information about peripheral artery disease. Such functional parameters include microvascular flow, or perfusion; intravascular venous oxygen saturation (SvO2), a marker of vascular reactivity; and skeletal muscle T2*, a surrogate for muscle oxygenation. Traditional methods investigate the aforementioned parameters separately, however integrating a keyhole multi-echo GRE sequence in the post-labeling delay inherent to arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion imaging, it is possible to simultaneously quantify all three parameters. In this work, an interleaved pulsed ASL (PASL) and multi-echo GRE sequence (PASL/Ox-BOLD) was developed and validated against the individual PASL and Ox-BOLD techniques. Results demonstrate that simultaneous quantification of perfusion, SvO2, and T2* is possible with PASL/Ox-BOLD.