Modulation of Susceptibility-Weighted Contrast in Volunteers by Using Caffeine

Purpose: Changes in cerebral blood flow can be induced by exogenous agents, such as carbogen or caffeine. One consequence of these physiological challenges is a change of the oxygenation level of the venous blood, which influences the BOLD signal or the SWI contrast. The aim of this work was to investigate the influence of caffeine on the contrast observed with high-resolution susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) in volunteers. Materials and Methods: High resolution T2*-weighted images were acquired in four volunteers on a 1.5 T system using a velocity compensated 3D gradient echo imaging sequence. Sequence par…