Investigating application of multi-echo, multi-delay arterial spin labeling (ASL) to study endothelial exchange of water

We applied multi-echo Hadamard encoded ASL imaging to study blood flow (CBF) and trans-endothelial exchange of water (Tex) as markers of vascular function to study two common risk factors of dementia; aging and sleep deprivation. We found that older adults had significantly lower CBF, and shorter Tex compared to young adults. In the same young adults, we compared CBF and Tex after a normal night of sleep and after sleep deprivation. Both CBF and Tex were insignificantly lower when measured after sleep deprivation compared to measurements after normal sleep.