Motivation: Blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability is measurable using T1-contrast MR Fingerprinting (MRF), but incorporating multiple contrasts may improve measurement accuracy and precision, enhancing quantification of BBB water exchange (WEX). Goal(s): Our goal was to evaluate the potential of leveraging longitudinal and transverse relaxation to measure cerebral blood volume and intravascular residence time using MRF. Approach: We extended and optimised a BBB WEX simulation to include T2 effects, simulating a fast imaging with steady-state precession (FISP) MRF sequence, and performed dictionary matching on simulated signals with and without noise Results: Including multiple contrasts improves sequence sensitivity to intravascular residence time, with good parameter matching capability. Impact: Preliminary simulations indicate that using multi-contrast MRF for water-exchange measurements improves sensitivity to intravascular residence time, yielding the potential for enhanced quantification of BBB permeability. Further optimisation and noise reduction will further improve matching accuracy.
Kanani et al. (Tue,) studied this question.