Suryanarayanan Sivaram Kaushik1,2, Gary P.
Cofer2, Matthew S. Freeman2,3, Zackary I. Cleveland2,
Bastiaan Driehuys2
1Biomedical Engineering,
Duke University, Durham, NC, United States; 2Center for In Vivo Microscopy, Duke University
Medical Center, Durham, NC, United States; 3Medical Physics, Duke
University Medical Center, Durham, NC, United States
The ~200 ppm chemical shift difference between gaseous hyperpolarized (HP) 129Xe and HP 129Xe dissolved in the lung tissues (dissolved phase) makes this agent an excellent probe of pulmonary gas exchange processes. Dissolved phase HP 129Xe images have displayed profound evidence of gravity-dependent gas exchange heterogeneity. However, a deeper understanding of lung function, and quantitative analysis of ventilation and gas exchange would benefit from simultaneous imaging of 129Xe in the dissolved and gas-phases. In this work, we demonstrate a method to acquire both the gas and dissolved phase images of 129Xe in a single acquisition, using an interleaved 3D-radial sequence.