Whole Brain Distortion-free 3D pseudo-Continuous Arterial Spin Labeling at 7T with Turbo FLASH, Optimized Labeling and Background Suppression

The potential of 7T has not been fulfilled for pseudo-Continuous Arterial Spin Labeling (pCASL) because of challenges in labeling, background suppression (BS), and readouts. This study proposed a new labeling parameter, a superior BS pulse, and an accelerated and segmented 3D Turbo-FLASH (TFL) readouts. Despite the field inhomogeneity at 7T, the new labeling parameter achieves high labeling efficiency without signal interference, and OPTIM as BS pulse robustly achieves high inversion efficiency. 3D TFL pCASL provides whole brain coverage, abundant anatomical information without distortion, high resolution, and sufficient SNR in 11 mins.