Pseudo Random Arterial Modulation (PRAM)

de Mohammad Reza Taei-Tehrani

The Pseudo Random Arterial Modulation (PRAM) is a non-invasive MRI based method to measure blood flow. It does not require any contrast agent but rather uses water protons in the body as the contrast. PRAM is based on a pseudo random sequence of inversions and non-inversions of the arterial blood using radio frequency (RF) pulses at a labeling plane inferior to the imaging plane. A series of images are taken at the imaging plane and flow reconstructed from the transit time measurements. PRAM does not require separate control and label acquisition as is common in Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) but rather measures the distribution of transit times to a voxel within one integrated scan. Adiabatic inversion or non-inversion pre-pulses (PRAM pulses) are performed prior to a gradient echo imaging. The PRAM method has been tested on a flow phantom and the results were in confirmation with the theoretical flow and velocity measurements. Subsequently the PRAM method was tested on a human leg and the results were comparable with the Ultrasound measurements. The final testing phase was performed on a human brain and the results were compared with the phased contrast MRA. We have demonstrated here that that the PRAM technique can measure the velocity profile and the transit time accurately and efficiently on any organ such as human brain.