Reproducibility of cerebral perfusion measurements using BOLD delay

• Published in: Human brain mapping Vol. 44; no. 7; pp. 2778 - 2789
• Main Authors: Khalil, Ahmed A., Tanritanir, Ayse C., Grittner, Ulrike, Kirilina, Evgeniya, Villringer, Arno, Fiebach, Jochen B., Mekle, Ralf
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken, USA John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.05.2023
• Subjects: Alzheimer's disease; blood flow; BOLD delay; Brain - blood supply; Cerebrovascular Circulation; Contrast agents; Contrast media; Correlation coefficient; Correlation coefficients; Datasets; Delay; Humans; Magnetic resonance imaging; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Patients; Perfusion; Reproducibility; Reproducibility of Results; resting‐state functional MRI; Stroke; BOLD delay; perfusion; resting-state functional MRI; blood flow; reproducibility
• DOI: 10.1002/hbm.26244
• ISSN: 1065-9471; 1097-0193

BOLD delay is an emerging, noninvasive method for assessing cerebral perfusion that does not require the use of intravenous contrast agents and is thus particularly suited for longitudinal monitoring. In this study, we assess the reproducibility of BOLD delay using data from 136 subjects with normal cerebral perfusion scanned on two separate occasions with scanners, sequence parameters, and intervals between scans varying between subjects. The effects of various factors on the reproducibility of BOLD delay, defined here as the differences in BOLD delay values between the scanning sessions, were investigated using a linear mixed model. Reproducibility was additionally assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient of BOLD delay between sessions. Reproducibility was highest in the posterior cerebral artery territory. The mean BOLD delay test–retest difference after accounting for the aforementioned factors was 1.2 s (95% CI = 1.0 to 1.4 s). Overall, BOLD delay shows good reproducibility, but care should be taken when interpreting longitudinal BOLD delay changes that are either very small or are located in certain brain regions. This study investigates in detail the test–retest repeatability of a noninvasive perfusion imaging method (BOLD delay) in a large cohort of individuals. We find good overall test–retest repeatability, but longitudinal changes in BOLD delay in some areas of the brain should be interpreted with caution. The results of our study will be interesting to researchers currently using, or planning on using this method by providing them with a benchmark against which to interpret their results.