PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ronja C. Berg
AU  - Christine Preibisch
AU  - David L. Thomas
AU  - Karin Shmueli
AU  - Emma Biondetti
TI  - Investigating the Effect of Flow Compensation and Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping Method on the Accuracy of Venous Susceptibility Measurement
AID  - 10.1101/2021.04.14.439812
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.04.14.439812
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/14/2021.04.14.439812.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/14/2021.04.14.439812.full
AB  - Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a promising non-invasive method for obtaining information relating to the oxygen metabolism. However, the optimal acquisition sequence and QSM reconstruction method for reliable venous susceptibility measurements are unknown. Full flow compensation is generally recommended to correct for the influence of venous blood flow, although the effect of flow compensation on the accuracy of venous susceptibility values has not been systematically evaluated. In this study, we investigated the effect of different acquisition sequences, including different flow compensation schemes, and different QSM reconstruction methods on venous susceptibilities.Ten healthy subjects were scanned with five or six distinct QSM sequence designs implementing different flow compensation schemes. All data sets were processed using six different QSM pipelines and venous blood susceptibility was evaluated in whole-brain segmentations of the venous vasculature and single veins. The quality of vein segmentations and the accuracy of venous susceptibility values were analyzed and compared between all combinations of sequences and QSM methods.The influence of the QSM method on average venous susceptibility values was found to be 2.7 - 11.6 times greater than the influence of the acquisition sequence, including flow compensation. The majority of the investigated QSM reconstruction methods tended to underestimate venous susceptibility values in the vein segmentations that were obtained.Using multi-echo gradient-echo acquisitions with monopolar readout gradients, we found that sequences without full flow compensation yielded venous susceptibility values comparable to sequences with full flow compensation. However, the QSM method had a great influence on susceptibility values and thus needs to be considered carefully for accurate venous QSM.Competing Interest StatementEmma Biondetti received grant funding from Biogen Inc. and France Parkinson unrelated to the scope of this study.χmagnetic susceptibility;ANOVAanalysis of variance;CSCompressed SENSE;dTIKdirect Tikhonov;GREgradient-recalled echo;ICVsinternal cerebral veins;iLSQRiterative least-squares;iTIKiterative Tikhonov;MEDIMorphology Enabled Dipole Inversion;MVFmultiscale vessel filtering;OEFoxygen extraction fraction;PCAphase contrast angiography;PEphase encoding;QSMquantitative susceptibility mapping;ROIregion of interest;SNRsignal-to-noise ratio;SSSsuperior sagittal sinus;STARstreaking artifact reduction;STISusceptibility Tensor Imaging;StrSstraight sinus;SvO2venous oxygen saturation;TEecho time;TGVtotal generalized variation;TIKTikhonov;TraStransverse sinuses.