Charles H. Cunningham1,2, Albert P. Chen3, Ralph E. Hurd4
1Dept. of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada; 3GE Healthcare, Toronto, ON, Canada; 4GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, USA
The biochemical reactions observed in hyperpolarized 13C studies are presumed to occur within the cellular cytosol and organelles, so it is therefore reasonable to assume that the measured carbon-13 signals contain a large intracellular component. The hypothesis of this study was that sinusoidal tagging of the longitudinal magnetization could be used to differentiate metabolic products in the intracelluar space from those flowing in the blood pool. All metabolites were observed to decay rapidly following the application of the spatial tags, suggesting that although the biochemical reactions occur within the cytosol, the resulting metabolic products are quickly transported out of cells.