Microvascular blood volume magnetic resonance imaging

A magnetic resonance system including:

• a magnetic resonance imaging scanner;
• and
• a processor configured to cooperate with the magnetic resonance imaging scanner to perform a method including:
• performing an inversion recovery magnetic resonance excitation sequence including a signal reduction component that reduces magnetization from blood more than magnetization from parenchymal tissue, the inversion recovery magnetic resonance excitation sequence comprising a spatially non-selective inversion recovery pulse followed by an excitation radio frequency pulse separated from the spatially non-selective inversion recovery pulse by an inversion time effective to reduce the magnetization from blood more than the magnetization from parenchymal tissue;
• performing a readout magnetic resonance sequence to acquire a magnetic resonance signal generated by the magnetic resonance excitation sequence including the signal reduction component, the readout magnetic resonance sequence being performed subsequent to the performing of the inversion recovery magnetic resonance excitation sequence including the signal reduction component;
• generating a reconstructed image from the acquired magnetic resonance signal;
• and
• computing a blood volume parameter value from the reconstructed image, the computing of the blood volume parameter value including at least one of:
• (i) normalizing the reconstructed image based on a T1 value of tissue to generate a tissue-normalized reconstructed image and computing the blood volume from the tissue-normalized reconstructed image, and
• (ii) computing an intermediate parameter functionally related to blood volume for a plurality of reconstructed images produced by repetitively performing the readout magnetic resonance sequence and the generating with a corresponding plurality of echo times and fitting a parameterized model to the intermediate parameters and the corresponding echo times, the parameterized model having parameters including a rest blood volume and a blood volume change.