Reverse Blood Flow MRI: Brain Physiology Insights
- A team led by UC Berkeley has unveiled a novel MRI technique, Displacement Spectrum (DiSpect) MRI, that maps blood flow in reverse to reveal its source in the...
- Unlike some current MRI methods, DiSpect MRI uses water in the blood as a tracing agent to map perfusion, or blood flow, in the brain.
Discover how a groundbreaking MRI method, DiSpect MRI, is revolutionizing our understanding of the brain. News Directory 3 reports on UC Berkeley researchers’ progress of this new technique, which maps brain blood flow in reverse, offering unprecedented brain physiology insights. By tracing the “memory” of nuclear spins within blood, DiSpect MRI pinpoints the origin of blood flow, providing crucial data that could transform disease diagnosis. This innovative approach also detects subtle changes in blood flow, such as those caused by caffeine or even hand squeezing. The DiSpect MRI method could improve detection of arteriovenous malformations.See what’s next for this exciting technology.
New MRI Method Maps Brain Blood Flow, Offers Deeper Insight
Updated June 2, 2025
A team led by UC Berkeley has unveiled a novel MRI technique, Displacement Spectrum (DiSpect) MRI, that maps blood flow in reverse to reveal its source in the brain’s veins. This advancement promises to deepen understanding of brain physiology and offer safer, more efficient disease diagnosis, according to a study in Nature Communications.
Unlike some current MRI methods, DiSpect MRI uses water in the blood as a tracing agent to map perfusion, or blood flow, in the brain. What sets DiSpect apart is its ability to track the “memory” of nuclear spins, allowing it to map blood flow back to its source.
How DiSpect works: Water spins in blood are “tagged” based on their original location. As blood flows, these tagged spins move, revealing the source location.Credit: Michael Lustig and Ekin Karasan
Michael Lustig, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and the study’s principal investigator, explained that the method tags information onto spins in the blood, which store the information long enough to travel from capillaries and smaller veins to larger veins. Imaging at the larger veins allows researchers to decode the information and determine the blood’s