S. Sivaram Kaushik1, Nilesh Mistry1,2, Abraham C. Thomas2, Bastiaan Driehuys2
1Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA; 2Center for In-Vivo Microscopy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
3He MRI is increasingly useful for regionally evaluating ventilation in mouse models of asthma before and after challenge with Methacholine (MCh). Such changes can be effectively quantified by suitably normalizing the pre- and post-MCh images, and subtracting the two to generate a difference map depicting regional changes in ventilation. However, difference mapping can in some instances be confounded by even sub-millimeter changes in the animals position between the two images. This problem can be addressed by registering the two 3He images to a common coordinate space without obscuring arising ventilation defects. Here, our approach has been described.