ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Imaging Methods
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1622351
Quantitative evaluation of normal cerebrospinal fluid flow in Sylvian aqueduct and perivascular spaces of middle cerebral artery and circle of Willis using 2D phase-contrast MRI imaging
Provisionally accepted
- Houston Methodist Academic Institute, Houston, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Recently, it was proposed that CSF flow comprises a critical part of the glymphatic system, playing a role in various brain abnormalities from Alzheimer's disease to hydrocephalus. Thus, CSF flow measurements have been increasingly used for diagnostic and clinical monitoring purposes. However, CSF flow in the periarterial spaces of the circle of Willis and the middle cerebral artery remain unexplored. We employed phase-contrast MRI to establish baseline parameters of CSF flow along the perivascular spaces of the circle of Willis and the middle cerebral artery and compare them with the Sylvian aqueduct. We also developed a new, semi-automated method for outlining the perivascular spaces and extracting CSF flow parameters. The 24 healthy participants were recruited to achieve an even distribution by age (mean: 40 ± 11) and gender (13 males, 11 females). For most CSF flow parameters, the circle of Willis and middle cerebral artery were similar but differed from the Sylvian aqueduct. The linear mixed models and general linear mixed models for CSF flow parameters, except for time to peak velocity, indicated strong effects of the conduits. CSF velocity was lower by 0.159 cm/s in the circle of Willis and 0.198 cm/s in the middle cerebral artery than in the Sylvian aqueduct. Overall, differences in CSF flow parameters between sex and age groups were negligible. Moreover, our semi-automated routine for CSF flow measurements in the Sylvian aqueduct (0.00700 mL/s) aligned with the range of literature values, 0.0049-0.0432 mL/s. In this study, we have established baseline values of CSF flow along the circle of Willis and the middle cerebral artery as well as highlighted the limited influence of sex and/or age.
Keywords: cerebrospinal fluid flow1, Sylvian aqueduct2, perivascular space3, healthy volunteers4, Quantification5, phase-contrast MRI6, sex7, age8
Received: 03 May 2025; Accepted: 19 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Le, Karmonik, Regnier-Golanov, Golanov and Britz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Eugene Golanov, Houston Methodist Academic Institute, Houston, United States
Gavin Britz, Houston Methodist Academic Institute, Houston, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.