Mathieu Boudreau1,2, Xiaojun Xu3,
William Dominguez-Viqueira4, Giles Santyr1,5
1Imaging Research
Laboratories, John. P. Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Dept.
of Physics & Astronomy, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario,
Canada; 3University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom; 4Imaging
Research, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 5Dept.
of Medical Biophysics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of hyperpolarized noble gases has been demonstrated to behave anisotropically in the lung. In this work, we investigate hyperpolarized 129Xe gas ADC anisotropy in vivo at 74 mT in an elastase-instilled rat model of emphysema. The effect of diffusion time (6 and 100 ms) on 129Xe anisotropic ADC was quantified using the Yablonskiy model in sham instilled and elastase-instilled rats. The largest change in DL was observed at 100 ms (13% increase for the elastase compared to the sham rats), and for DT at 6 ms a 25% increase was observed.