Hyperpolarized 129Xe Lung MRI with TrueFISP on Spontaneous Breathing Mice by Means of Continuous Delivery of Xe Gas Polarized Under Low Pressure

Hirohiko Imai^1,2, Fumito Imai², Tsuyoshi Ito², Ryosuke Kashiwagi², Toshio Kadobayashi², Atsuomi Kimura², Hideaki Fujiwara²

Hyperpolarized ¹²⁹Xe trueFISP images are examined on spontaneous breathing mice using the low-pressure and continuous-flow type ¹²⁹Xe polarizer toward the development of a fully non-invasive method for lung functional imaging. With the aid of the fast imaging sequence and the high-performance ¹²⁹Xe polarizer, temporal resolution and SNR have been extremely improved in the resulting images. By exploiting these characteristics, ¹²⁹Xe lung images at maximum inspiratory and expiratory phases were successfully obtained from rapidly breathing mice.