Christopher K. Macgowan1,2, Shengping Wu2, Rogerio Tessler3, Jaques Belik2,4, Andrea Kassner2,5
1Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2Physiology and Experimental Medicine, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada; 3Pediatrics, Pontifcia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; 4Pediatrics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 5Medical Imaging, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) affects approximately 1% of newborn children and is the leading cause of death in pre-term infants. It is characterized by regional lung collapse (atelectasis) resulting from low surfactant production in the immature lung. Atelectasis results in shortening and folding of the alveolar walls, leading to abnormal and tortuous microvasculature. Relative recirculation (rR) obtained from dynamic perfusion MRI has been proposed previously as a metric of microvessel tortuosity. Our findings show increased rR values in the collapsed lung which we believe is associated with acute architectural remodeling.