Robert V. Cadman1,
Jionghan Dai1, Michael D. Evans2, Daniel J. Jackson3,
James E. Gern3, Robert F. Lemanske Jr.3, Sean B. Fain1
1Medical
Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA; 2Biostatistics
& Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA; 3Pediatrics,
University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA
Pulmonary 3He MRI was performed on 9- and 10-year-old subjects who had been enrolled at birth in a longitudinal study of asthma development. Separate diffusion-weighted radial stack-of-stars and 3-dimensional radial dynamic series were acquired for each subject. Root-mean-square diffusion length of 3He was found to correlate with both current asthma diagnosis and history of human rhinovirus infection associated with wheezing illnesses during preschool ages. Ventilation defects observed in dynamic images were correlated with current asthma diagnosis.