Weiwei Ruan1, Jianping Zhong1, Ke Wang2, Yeqing Han1, and Xin Zhou1
1Wuhan Institute of Physical and Mathematics,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China, People's Republic of, 2Department of MRI, zhongnan hospital of wuhan university, Wuhan, China, People's Republic of
To
detect the early emphysema, hyperpolarized xenon diffusion MRI with multi-b
values was used to quantify the lung terminal airways in
five initial stages of emphysematous rats and five control rats. The DL (longitudinal
diffusion coefficient), r, h, LM and S/V in the emphysematous group
showed significant differences compared to those in the control group (P<0.05)
and also exhibited a strong linear correlation (|r|>0.8) to Lm from
histology for all the rats. The results showed multi-b diffusion MRI of hyperpolarized
xenon has potential for the
diagnosis of emphysema at the early stage.