A key development of our MRI technique has been the precise control of endogenous carbon dioxide (CO2) and oxygen (O2) during a blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) MRI examination, to better interrogate cerebrovascular autoregulation and cerebral blood flow changes in stroke patients. For patients with brain tumors, a more comprehensive hemodynamic tissue profile can be derived from changes in hypercapnia (i.e., high CO2 levels) and hypoxia (low oxygen levels). The precise gas control is provided by the -RespirActTM- system, which has been pioneered at the University of Toronto under supervision of Dr. Joseph A Fisher and Dr. David J Mikulis, under whom the senior group leader of the ASTRAN team, Dr. Jorn Fierstra, was working as a PhD candidate to further develop this technique.

All our projects are carried out as research studies, under approval of the local ethics board and according to the declaration of Helsinki. Over the last 10 years, the ASTRAN team has been publishing groundbreaking research in leading journals of clinical neuroscience and its members have received competitive third party funding and awards on institutional as well as (inter)national level.