Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of airways in humans with use of hyperpolarized 3He

✍ Scribed by Peter Bachert; Lothar R. Schad; Michael Bock; Michael V. Knopp; Michael Ebert; Tino Grobmann; Werner Heil; Dirk Hofmann; Reinhard Surkau; Ernst W. Otten

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 651 KB
• Volume: 36
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0740-3194
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.1910360204

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The nuclear spin polarization of noble gases can be enhanced strongly by laser optical pumping followed by electron‐nuclear polarization transfer. Direct optical pumping of metastable ^3^He atoms has been shown to produce enormous polarization on the order of 0.4–0.6. This is about 10^5^ times larger than the polarization of water protons at thermal equilibrium used in conventional MRI. We demonstrate that hyper‐polarized ^3^He gas can be applied to nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of organs with air‐filled spaces in humans. In vivo ^3^He MR experiments were performed in a whole‐body MR scanner with a superconducting magnet ramped down to 0.8 T. Anatomical details of the upper respiratory tract and of the lungs of a volunteer were visualized with the FLASH technique demonstrating the potential of the method for fast imaging of airways in the human body and for pulmonary ventilation studies.