ASL lexicon and reporting recommendations: A consensus report from the ISMRM Open Science Initiative for Perfusion Imaging (OSIPI)

The 2015 consensus statement published by the ISMRM Perfusion Study Group and the EU COST Action ‘ASL in Dementia’ aimed to encourage the implementation of robust Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) perfusion MRI for clinical applications and promote consistency across scanner types, sites, and studies. Subsequently, the recommended 3D pseudo-continuous ASL sequence has been implemented by most major MRI manufacturers. However, ASL remains a rapidly and widely developing field, leading inevitably to further divergence of the technique and its associated terminology, which could cause confusion and hamper research reproducibility.
On behalf of the ISMRM Perfusion Study Group, and as part of the ISMRM Open Science Initiative for Perfusion Imaging (OSIPI), the ASL Lexicon Task-Force has been working on the development of an ‘ASL Lexicon and Reporting Recommendations’ for perfusion imaging and analysis, aiming to 1) develop standardized, consensus nomenclature and terminology for the broad range of ASL imaging techniques and parameters, as well as the physiological constants required for quantitative analysis, and 2) provide a community-endorsed recommendation on the imaging parameters that we encourage authors to include when describing ASL methods in scientific reports/articles.
In this manuscript, the sequences and parameters in (pseudo-)continuous ASL, pulsed ASL, velocity-selective ASL and multi-timepoint ASL for brain perfusion imaging are included. However, the content of the lexicon is not intended to be limited to these techniques, and this paper provides the foundation for a growing online inventory that will be extended by the community as further methods and improvements are developed and established.