Test-retest reliability of cerebral blood flow in healthy individuals using arterial spin labeling: Findings from the EMBARC study

Abstract

Introduction Previous investigations of test-retest reliability of cerebral blood flow (CBF) at rest measured with pseudo-continuous Arterial Spin Labeling (pCASL) demonstrated good reliability, but are limited by the use of similar scanner platforms. In the present study we examined test-retest reliability of CBF in regions implicated in emotion and the default mode network. Material and methods We measured absolute and relative CBF at rest in thirty-one healthy subjects in two scan sessions, one week apart, at four different sites and three different scan platforms. We derived CBF from pCASL images with an automated algorithm and calculated intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) across sessions for regions of interest. In addition, we investigated site effects. Results For both absolute and relative CBF measures, ICCs were good to excellent (i.e. > 0.6) in most brain regions, with highest values observed for the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and ventral striatum. A leave-one-site-out cross validation analysis did not show a significant effect for site on whole brain CBF and there was no proportional bias across sites. However, a significant site effect was present in the repeated measures ANOVA. Conclusions The high test-retest reliability of CBF measured with pCASL in a range of brain regions implicated in emotion and salience processing, emotion regulation, and the default mode network, which have been previously linked to depression symptomatology supports its use in studies that aim to identify neuroimaging biomarkers of treatment response.

Cerebral Blood Perfusion Predicts Response to Sertraline versus Placebo for Major Depressive Disorder in the EMBARC Trial

“…Generally, pCASL parameters consisted of a 1516 ms labelling duration, 1500 ms post-labelling delay, 4460 ms/17 ms TR/TE, 3.44 × 3.44 × 5 mm [3] in-plane resolution, multi-slice acquisition in ascending order, 29 slices covering the whole brain, 35 pairs, 220 × 220 mm FOV, 64 × 64 matrix, 90° excitation flip angle, with scan duration of approximately 5 min. For further details on the pCASL sequence, refer to Almeida et al [9]. These imaging parameters are comparable and consistent with recommendations from a recent consensus paper [7].…”

“…In recent work, both reliability of cerebral blood perfusion and its potential as a disease-state marker have been investigated. Perfusion has been observed to be reliable in healthy controls across time and in detecting abnormalities in MDD participants as compared to healthy controls [8], [9]. Differences in perfusion have been identified between MDD participants and healthy controls in some but not all studies [10], [11], [12], [13].…”

Effects of resting state condition on reliability, trait specificity, and network connectivity of brain function measured with arterial spin labeled perfusion MRI

“…In accordance with previous studies ( Chen et al, 2011 ; Jain et al, 2012 ; Jahng et al, 2005 ; Hodkinson et al, 2013 ; Zou et al, 2015a ; Almeida et al, 2018 ), our results demonstrated excellent retest reliability of both mean and regional CBF for all the four resting conditions. Among the 4 resting conditions, FIX presented the lowest retest reliability, while EC yielded higher (but not significantly) reliability and reproducibility than EO and PVT.…”

Structural and functional brain parameters related to cognitive performance across development: Replication and extension of the parieto-frontal integration theory in a single sample

“…Brain perfusion was imaged using a pseudo continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) sequence (Wu et al 2007), which has been shown to have good to excellent scan-rescan reliability within site (Almeida et al 2018). The sequence used a single-shot spin-echo EPI readout.…”