Xiaojun
Xu1,2, Juan Parra-Robles3, Alexei Ouriadov1,
Giles E. Santyr1,4
1Imaging Laboratories, Robarts Research
Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Department of Physics,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; 3University
of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom; 4Department of Medical
Biophysics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
3He
diffusion in the lungs is restricted by airway and alveoli walls and
therefore is highly dependent on lung microstructure. 3He ADC has
been shown to be sensitive to changes in terminal airway anatomy, specifically
alveolar damage due to emphysema in both humans and animal models. At the terminal airway, 3He
diffusion has been demonstrated to be anisotropic, described by longitudinal
diffusion coefficient (DL) and transverse diffusion coefficient (DT).
The purpose of this work was to measure and compare DL and DT
maps in sham-instilled and elastase-instilled Wistar rats at two
sub-millisecond (360 μs and 800 μs ).