In Vivo 17O MRS Imaging for Assessing Myocardial Oxygen Metabolism in Rat Heart at 9.4T

Xiao-Hong Zhu¹, Yi Zhang¹, Wei Chen¹

Heart, similar to brain, is a highly aerobic organ which consumes a large portion of oxygen utilized by the entire body. The myocardial oxygen metabolism provides essential energy for performing myocyte contraction/relaxation and maintaining normal cardiac functions. It is, thus, important to develop an in vivo MR imaging approach capable of noninvasively imaging the myocardial oxygen metabolic rate (MVO₂). Recently, high-field in vivo ¹⁷O MRS imaging (MRSI) has been applied to imaging the rat brain oxygen metabolism. In this study, we exploit the feasibility of the ¹⁷O approach for imaging rat MVO₂ at 9.4T with a brief inhalation of ¹⁷O-labeled oxygen gas under basal and workload conditions.