Qiang Xiong1,2, Qinglu Li3, Abdul Mansoor3, Fei Du2, Wei Chen2,4, Jianyi Zhang1,3
1Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 2Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 3Dept. of Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 4Dept. of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
A novel strategy is presented for further improving the steady-state magnetization saturation transfer (ST) method in measuring chemical exchange reaction kinetics in vivo. The strategy is based on numerical simulation of Bloch equations to optimize both the pre-saturation delay and saturation time in order to rapidly achieve steady-state magnetization for chemically coupled phosphate metabolite. The new approach was validated in the swine heart model in vivo for determining the forward rate constant of myocardial creatine kinase reaction and showed substantial reductions in both saturation time (by 56 %) as well as total repetition time (by 75 %) as compared to conventional approach. The results demonstrate the great potentials for biomedical applications including on human study.