Cerebral blood flow measurement using fMRI and pet : a validation study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique allowing the study of hemodynamic changes in the brain. Having a number of advantages over positron emission tomography (PET), the current gold standard, fMRI appears like an attractive alternative to study brain function. However, the measurements obtained with fMRI have not been rigorously validated.This thesis describes a study comparing cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes measured using a flow-sensitive alternating inversion recovery (FAIR) fMRI perfusion method, to the ones obtained using PET. We scanned 10 healthy normal volunteers under identical experimental conditions during presentation of 4 levels of visual stimulation and one level of hypercapnia. The CBF changes were compared in 4 regions-of-interest.Good correspondence was found in the locations of the CBF changes. FAIR CBF changes had a higher signal-to-noise ratio and presented a monotonic increase with stimulation intensity, absent in PET measurements. FAIR measurements were correlated to PET but slightly lower. Statistical analysis of the data did not show that FAIR measurements were significantly different from PET ones