Pulmonary T2* Dependence on the Lung Volume: Preliminary Results

Iga Muradyan¹, Mirko Hrovat², Mikayel Dabaghyan³, James Butler⁴, Hiroto Hatabu³, Samuel Patz³

Breathing is accompanied with alveolar shape changes: at lower lung volumes alveoli are more spherical, while at higher lung volumes they assume more polyhedral shape. Such changes can affect the field homogeneity in the tissue due to air-tissue susceptibility difference. We hypothesized that lung volume will affect pulmonary T2* and measured it at 3 lung volumes: near RV, FRC and TLC. The signal behavior with TE suggested that T2* does not follow mono-exponential function and more sophisticated model is necessary for proper T2* estimation. The lung data suggests a small increase of T2* with lung volume.