Pavlova Olga S, Anisimov Nikolay V, Gervits Lev L, Gulyaev Mikhail V, Semenova Valentina N, Pirogov Yury A, Panchenko Vladislav Ya
Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
Faculty of Fundamental Medicine, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
Magn Reson Med. 2020 Oct;84(4):2117-2123. doi: 10.1002/mrm.28270. Epub 2020 Apr 10.
The aim of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of fluorine-19 ( F) MRI of the human lungs using octafluorocyclobutane (OFCB, C F ). This gas has 8 magnetically equivalent fluorine nuclei and relatively long T and T (˜50 ms), which render it suitable as an MRI contrast agent. Previous experiments in small laboratory animals showed that OFCB could be successfully used as an alternative to the gases often used for F MRI (sulfur hexafluoride and perfluoropropane).
One male volunteer participated in this study. Immediately before an MRI scan, the volunteer inhaled the gas mixture-80% OFCB with 20% oxygen-and held his breath. Experiments were performed on a 0.5T whole-body MR scanner with a customized transmit-receive coil tuned at F frequency. Fast spin echo in 2D and 3D modes was used for image acquisition. 2D images were obtained with in-plane resolution of 10 × 10 mm without slice selection. 3D images were obtained with the voxel size of 10 × 10 × 30 mm . Breath-hold duration was 20 s for 2D and 40 s for 3D imaging, respectively.
Anatomically consistent F MR images of the human lungs were obtained with SNR around 50 in 2D mode and 20 in 3D mode. 3D volumetric images of the lungs were reconstructed and provided physiologically reasonable volume estimates.
The application of OFCB enables informative F lung imaging even at low magnetic field strengths. The OFCB gas shows promise as an inhalable contrast agent for fluorine lung MRI and has a potential for clinical translation.
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