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• Technical Article •
Consistency study of cerebral blood flow measurements between enhanced arterial spin labeling and three-dimensional arterial spin labeling
YU Xiuying  LUO Yuqi  HE Rongshan  GONG Xiangyu  MENG Gang  HAN Guang 

Cite this article as YU X Y, LUO Y Q, HE R S, et al. Consistency study of cerebral blood flow measurements between enhanced arterial spin labeling and three-dimensional arterial spin labeling[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2026, 17(8): 107-114. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2026.08.011.


[Abstract] Objective To evaluate the consistency of cerebral blood flow (CBF) measurements between enhanced arterial spin labeling (eASL) and three-dimensional arterial spin labeling (3D-ASL) in different brain regions.Materials and Methods Thirty healthy volunteers (11 males, 19 females; mean age ± SD: 23 ± 7 years) were recruited between March 2024 and March 2025. All participants underwent both eASL (TR 9584 ms, with multiple post-labeling delays of 1.000, 1.361, 1.739, 2.141, 2.577, 3.067, and 3.658 s) and 3D-ASL (TR 4308 ms,PLD: 1.025 s, 2.025 s) scanning on a 3.0 T MR scanner. After head motion correction, spatial registration, and other preprocessing steps, a kinetic model was applied to the multi-delay eASL data to generate quantitative CBF maps. CBF values from 54 anatomical subregions, including cerebral lobes, deep nuclei, deep perforating artery territories, cerebellum, and others, were extracted and compared between the two techniques. The relative difference indices (normalized to the ipsilateral cerebrum and cerebellum, respectively) were also calculated. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Statistics 27.0. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to assess the normality of data distribution, and Levene's test was used to assess homogeneity of variances. Paired t-tests or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were performed accordingly. All statistical results were corrected using FDR. Bland-Altman analysis was used to evaluate the agreement between the two techniques, and intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) were calculated.Results Among the 54 brain regions, paired t-tests were performed on 48 regions, and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were performed on the remaining 6 regions. Significant differences in CBF values were observed in 48.15% (26/54) of brain regions (P < 0.05). eASL yielded significantly higher CBF values in the cerebral cortex and cerebellum compared to 3D-ASL. Conversely, in some deep nuclei, eASL yielded lower CBF values than 3D-ASL. Analysis of arterial transit time (ATT) revealed a clear stratification: cortical and cerebellar regions had longer ATTs (1.30 to 1.45 s), whereas deep nuclei and deep perforating territories had shorter ATTs (1.05 to 1.20 s). Bland-Altman analysis indicated a mean CBF difference of 3.57 mL/(100 g·min) across all regions, with an ICC(A,1) of 0.63, indicating moderate agreement but notable inter-individual variability.Conclusions There are significant region-dependent differences in cerebral blood flow perfusion measurements between eASL and 3D-ASL. The ATT of intracerebral arteries exhibits a typical regional layered distribution. In clinical quantitative assessment of cerebral perfusion, attention should be paid to the regional measurement differences between the two ASL sequences, and scanning protocols should be optimized to improve the accuracy of cerebral hemodynamic evaluation.
[Keywords] enhanced arterial spin labeling；3D arterial spin labeling；cerebral blood flow；arterial transit time；magnetic resonance imaging

YU Xiuying1   LUO Yuqi2   HE Rongshan3   GONG Xiangyu3   MENG Gang3*   HAN Guang1*  

1 Department of Medical Imaging, Linyi Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Linyi 276000, China

2 Department of Radiology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100070, China

3 AnImage Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Beijing 102600, China

Corresponding author: MENG G, E-mail: menggang@an-image.cn HAN G, E-mail: 13518694681@163.com

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2026-01-27
Accepted  2026-07-13
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2026.08.011
Cite this article as YU X Y, LUO Y Q, HE R S, et al. Consistency study of cerebral blood flow measurements between enhanced arterial spin labeling and three-dimensional arterial spin labeling[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2026, 17(8): 107-114. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2026.08.011.

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