Whole brain, isotropic, arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

This thesis presents the design, implementation, and validation of a novel, arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) pulse sequence to generate three-dimensional quantitative maps of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in mice at 7 Tesla with an isotropic 281 mum resolution. ASL and anatomical scans were registered to a common template using an automated non-linear registration pipeline to allow for voxel-wise inter-scan and inter-subject comparisons of CBF. The technique was applied to the study of a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) which demonstrates many of the characteristic features of cerebrovascular dysfunction present in AD. The technique resolved regions of significant difference between transgenic and wild-type mouse populations using voxel-wise- and region-of-interest-based analyses. These findings are the first to demonstrate the utility of perfusion MRI for population-based analysis of cerebrovascular pathophysiology in transgenic AD mice.