Quantitation of regional cerebral blood flow increases during motor activation: A multislice, steady-state, arterial spin tagging study

Steady-state arterial spin tagging approaches were used to construct multislice images of relative cerebral blood flow changes during finger- tapping tasks. Statistically significant Increases in cerebral blood flow were observed in primary sensorimotor cortex in all seven subjects. The mean volume of the activated region in the contralateral primary sensorimotor cortex was 0.9 cm³, and the mean increase in cerebral blood flow in the activated area was 54% ± 11%. Although the extended spatial coverage is advantageous for activation studies, the intrinsic sensitivity of the multislice approach is smaller than the intrinsic sensitivity of the single- slice, arterial spin tagging approach.