Xiao-Hong Zhu1, Qiang Xiong1,2, Yi Zhang1, Wei Chen1,2
1CMRR, Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
The cerebral ATP metabolism plays a central role in neuroenergetics for supporting brain energy and function. The approach of combining in vivo 31P MRS with magnetization saturation transfer (ST) is useful for noninvasively determining the cerebral metabolic rates of ATP involving ATPase reaction (CMRATP) and CK reaction (CMRCK). However, the conventional ST measurement requires a fully relaxed condition before the frequency-selected γ-ATP saturation for precise quantification of flux, resulting in a long repetition time (TR) and low efficiency. This poses a major hurdle for 3D CSI application in which many scans are needed. In this study, we implemented a newly developed ST strategy, which can achieve the same saturation transfer effect with a much short TR, with 3D 31P CSI for imaging CMRATP and CMRCK in animal at 9.4T with high efficacy.