ASL acquisition: ASL was performed using a single-delay pseudocontinuous (pCASL), with 3D eight-stacked spiral fast spin echo readout acquisition with background suppression, with the following imaging parameters: TR: 6512, TE: 10.2, FOV: 24 x 24 cm, slice thickness: 4 mm, scan time: 4 min, labeling duration: 1,500 ms, post-label delay: 2,000 ms, background suppressed three averages per acquisition based on the previously mentioned acquisition time. M0 scans were also acquired. ASL was reconstructed with an interpolated resolution of 1.9 × 1.9 × 4 mm3.
ASL post-processing: ASL post-processing was performed prior to CBF quantification for motion correction.
For generating CBF quantification maps, the previously described one compartment model for standard single delay ASL was utilized in this study (19 (link), 20 (link)).