David E Korenchan1,2, Robert Flavell1, Renuka Sriram1, Celine Baligand1, Kiel Neumann1, Subramaniam Sukumar1, Daniel B Vigneron1,2, Henry VanBrocklin1, David M Wilson1, and John Kurhanewicz1,2
1Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, 2Bioengineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States
Although large gains
in hyperpolarized 13C-bicarbonate
signal are obtainable for
extracellular pH imaging, toxicity becomes a
concern for clinical implementation of current methods.
We report an approach in which a precursor molecule, 1,2-glycerol carbonate, is
hyperpolarized and decomposed to form bicarbonate, CO2, and glycerol
using base-catalyzed hydrolysis. This technique enables concentrations and
polarizations similar to those previously reported, and its application to pH
imaging, both in phantom experiments and in
vivo in a mouse model of prostate cancer, is demonstrated.
