Judy Rose James1,2, Chen Lin1, Ulrike Dydak1,2, Andriy M. Babsky1, Helmut Stark3, Brian M. Dale4, Navin Bansal1,2
1Radiology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA; 2School of Health Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; 3MRI Coils Research, Stark Contrast, Erlangen, Germany; 4Siemens Medical Solutions, Cary, NC, USA
Initial 23Na MR images of the human torso acquired at 3-Tesla using an 8-channel dual tuned 23Na/1H transmit/receive coil after RF inhomogeneity corrections are presented. 23Na images were obtained with 0.3 cm spatial resolution and ~20 SNR in ~15 min with clear delineation between different abdominal organs and their sub-regions. These images were acquired with imaging parameters optimized under SAR limits for human scans. The ability to perform 23Na MRI in clinical settings is useful to non-invasively detect and diagnose diseases in various body organs due to the physiological significance of trans-membrane sodium gradient that is critical for cell survival.