Cerebral Perfusion Imaging with a Hyperpolarized Freely Diffusible Contrast Agent

Aaron Keith Grant¹, Elena Vinogradov¹, Xiaoen Wang¹, David C. Alsop¹

Hyperpolarized contrast agents have a number of attractive features for application to perfusion imaging. Indeed, these agents provide high signal strength with virtually no endogenous background signal and therefore make excellent tracers for monitoring blood flow. Moreover, agents that can freely penetrate the blood-brain barrier are expected to have long tissue residence times and hence enable robust quantification of perfusion. Here we show that carbon-13 labeled tertiary butanol can be hyperpolarized using dynamic nuclear polarization and present in vivo images acquired in rat brain.