BREATH-HOLD R2-ASTERISK MAPPING WITH A MULTIPLE GRADIENT-RECALLED ECHO SEQUENCE - APPLICATION TO THE EVALUATION OF INTRARENAL OXYGENATION

Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) MRI is sensitive to changes i n regional oxygen supply versus demand and is therefore potentially us eful in evaluating susceptibility to ischemic injury. Recently, we hav e demonstrated the use of BOLD MRI to evaluate intrarenal oxygenation using single shot echo-planar imaging (EPI). Here, we present an alter nate implementation of BOLD MRI sequence, using multiple gradient echo es, that does not require any specialized hardware.