Comparison of multi-delay FAIR and pCASL labeling approaches for renal perfusion quantification at 3T MRI

OBJECTIVE: To compare the most commonly used labeling approaches, flow-sensitive alternating inversion recovery (FAIR) and pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL), for renal perfusion measurement using arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI. METHODS: Multi-delay FAIR and pCASL were performed in 16 middle-aged healthy volunteers on two different occasions at 3T. Relative perfusion-weighted signal (PWS), temporal SNR (tSNR), renal blood flow (RBF), and arterial transit time (ATT) were calculated for the cortex and medulla in both kidneys. Bland–Altman plots, intra-class correlation coefficient, and within-subject coefficient of variation were used to assess reliability and agreement between measurements. RESULTS: For the first visit, RBF was 362 ± 57 and 140 ± 47 mL/min/100 g, and ATT was 0.47 ± 0.13 and 0.70 ± 0.10 s in cortex and medulla, respectively, using FAIR; RBF was 201 ± 72 and 84 ± 27 mL/min/100 g, and ATT was 0.71 ± 0.25 and 0.86 ± 0.12 s in cortex and medulla, respectively, using pCASL. For both labeling approaches, RBF and ATT values were not significantly different between visits. Overall, FAIR showed higher PWS and tSNR. Moreover, repeatability of perfusion parameters was better using FAIR. DISCUSSION: This study showed that compared to (balanced) pCASL, FAIR perfusion values were significantly higher and more comparable between visits. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10334-019-00806-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.