Juan Parra-Robles1, Martin Deppe1, Salma Ajraoui1, Kevin Teh1, Steven R. Parnell1, Jim M. Wild1
1Academic Unit of Radiology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
In this work, the global lung pO2 decay is measured using hyperpolarized 3He MR during prolonged breath-holds in human volunteers (up to 90 s) and analyzed with both the linear and exponential models. The effect of increased initial pO2 was also studied. The results showed that for long breath-holds it is possible to observe the non-linearity of the pO2 decay. These measurements substantiate previous observations over shorter breath-holds in animal models. The data may be used to obtain useful information about the physiology of oxygen uptake in the lungs during apnea and provide a more realistic physical basis for imaging based models of pO2.