Effects of red blood cells with reduced deformability on cerebral blood flow and vascular water transport: measurements in rats using time-resolved pulsed arterial spin labelling at 9.4 T

BACKGROUND: Our aim was to introduce damaged red blood cells (RBCs) as a tool for haemodynamic provocation in rats, hypothesised to cause decreased cerebral blood flow (CBF) and prolonged water capillary transfer time (CTT), and to investigate whether expected changes in CBF could be observed and if haemodynamic alterations were reflected by the CTT metric. METHODS: Damaged RBCs exhibiting a mildly reduced deformability were injected to cause aggregation of RBCs. Arterial spin labelling (ASL) magnetic resonance imaging experiments were performed at 9.4 T. Six datasets (baseline plus five datasets after injection) were acquired for each animal in a study group and a control group (13 and 10 female adult Wistar rats, respectively). For each dataset, ASL images at ten different inversion times were acquired. The CTT model was adapted to the use of a measured arterial input function, implying the use of a realistic labelling profile. Repeated measures ANOVA was used (alpha error = 0.05). RESULTS: After injection, significant differences between the study group and control group were observed for relative CBF in white matter (up to 20 percentage points) and putamen (up to 18–20 percentage points) and for relative CTT in putamen (up to 35–40 percentage points). CONCLUSIONS: Haemodynamic changes caused by injection of damaged RBCs were observed by ASL-based CBF and CTT measurements. Damaged RBCs can be used as a tool for test and validation of perfusion imaging modalities. CTT model fitting was challenging to stabilise at experimental signal-to-noise ratio levels, and the number of free parameters was minimised. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41747-021-00243-z.