Investigating the applicability of dual echo ASL for simultaneous BOLD- and CBF-based mapping of cerebrovascular reactivity

Combined measurement of BOLD- and CBF-based CVR by means of deASL would be valuable for assessment of cerebrovascular diseases. To investigate the applicability of deASL for CVR mapping, we acquired GE-EPI, deASL and pCASL data from 21 healthy volunteers during a hypercapnia challenge. BOLD-CVR from deASL was slightly but significantly less sensitive to hypercapnia-induced BOLD signal changes than GE-EPI, while differences between deASL- and pCASL-based CBF-CVR were rather insignificant. However, deASL failed in 5 of 21 subjects, while pCASL and GE-EPI merely failed in two and one subjects, respectively. Thus, we expect an elevated deASL failure rate in patient populations.