Comparison of velocity-selective-inversion arterial spin labeling schemes

Velocity-selective pulses include VS saturation pulses (VSS) and VS Inversion (VSI) pulses. Previous study (1) concluded that both dual-sBIR8-VSS and sinc-VSI achieved the highest SNR efficiency among the VS labeling schemes. Overall, the dual-sBIR8-VSS pulse was the most robust against field imperfections, whereas sinc-modulated VSI pulse showed greater tSNR and was the best among the VSI methods. In this study, VSI sequence with rectangular small flip-angle RF pulses (rect-VSI), sinc-VSI with and without VS gradients during the control condition are compared. Bloch simulation and in vivo experiments for their robustness against B1, B0 variation and eddy current (EC) are investigated.