Abstract #0907

Evaluation of Short Term Reproducibility of Hyperpolarized Helium-3 Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Adult Cystic Fibrosis using a Semi-Automated Segmentation Tool

Sarah Svenningsen^1,2, Miranda Kirby^1,2, Hassaan Ahmed^1,2, Nigel Paterson³, Grace Parraga^1,4

¹Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; ²Department of Medical Biophysics, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; ³Division of Respirology, Department of Medicine, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; ⁴Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

With the recent rapid development of a wider array of cystic fibrosis (CF) treatment options there is an urgent requirement for precise, practical and sensitive clinical endpoint measures that can be used to determine treatment response and CF disease progression over time. With the generation of a semi-automated method for the determination of pulmonary ventilation in CF, the short-term (7 2 days) precision and specificity of hyperpolarized ³He MRI measurements was evaluated. We were able to conclude that the semi-automated method provides superior precision for the detection of significant changes in pulmonary function over short periods of time.