Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast MRI is a potential method for a physiological characterization of tissue beyond mere morphological representation. The purpose of this study was to develop evaluation techniques for such examinations using a hyperoxia challenge. Administration of pure oxygen was applied to test these techniques, as pure oxygen can be expected to induce relatively small signal intensity (SI) changes compared to CO(2)-containing gases and thus requires very sensitive evaluation methods. Fourteen volunteers were investigated by alternating between breathing 100% O(2) and normal air, using two different paradigms of administration. Changes ranged from >30% in large veins to 1.71% +/- 0.14% in basal ganglia and 0.82% +/- 0.08% in white matter. To account for a slow physiological response function, a reference for correlation analysis was derived from the venous reaction. An objective method is presented that allows the adaptation of the significance threshold to the complexity of the paradigm used. Reference signal characteristics in representative brain tissue regions were established. As the presented evaluation scheme proved its applicability to small SI changes induced by pure oxygen, it can readily be used for similar experiments with other gases.
Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.