This article is part of the supplement: 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida .

Oral presentation

The cranium as an oscillator: analysis of phase relationships in intracranial blood and CSF pulsations using flow sensitive MRI

Mark Wagshul¹ , Michael Egnor², Erin McCormack¹, Pat McAllister³ and Raphael Hazel⁴

¹  Department of Radiology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Health Science Center, Level 4, Room 109, Stony Brook, New York 11794-8460, USA

²  Department of Neurosurgery, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Health Science Center, T-12 Room 080, Stony Brook, New York 11794-8122, USA

³  Department of Neurosurgery, Wayne State University School of Medicine, 4201 St. Antoine, Suite UHC-6E, Detroit, Michigan 48201, USA

⁴  Department Physiology & Biophysics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Health Science Center, T-6, Room 140, Stony Brook, New York 11794-8661, USA

author email corresponding author email

from 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida
Cambridge, UK. 30 August – 2 September 2006

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research 2006, 3(Suppl 1):S12doi:10.1186/1743-8454-3-S1-S12

Published:	21 December 2006

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

Over the past two decades, flow sensitive MRI has been used to demonstrate phase relationships between waveforms of blood and CSF pulsations in the cranium and marked changes in phase of CSF pulsatility have been described in hydrocephalus. However, there is no systematic explanation for the normal phase relationships between blood and CSF pulsations, and we have no theoretical framework for understanding these phase relationships in normal subjects and no theoretical framework for understanding why they change in hydrocephalus. We have undertaken a systematic study of the phase relationships of intracranial blood and CSF flow in normal individuals using flow sensitive MRI, and interpret the results using a model of the cranium as a forced oscillator.