Dirk Mayer1,2, Yi-Fen Yen3,
Ralph Hurd3, Sonal Josan1,2, Jae Mo Park2,
Adolf Pfefferbaum1,4, Daniel Spielman2
1Neuroscience Program, SRI
International, Menlo Park, CA, United States; 2Radiology, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA, United States; 3GE Healthcare; 4Psychiatry
& Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
The feasibility of both polarizing [1-13C]-lactate and detecting its metabolic conversion in vivo has previously been demonstrated. As lactate serves as an important energy source for the heart, hyperpolarized lactate could potentially be used as an alternative to pyruvate for probing heart metabolism. The aim of this work was to apply hyperpolarized [1-13C]-lactate to the measurement of cardiac metabolism and compare it to [1-13C]-pyruvate as a substrate. The presented data demonstrate that bicarbonate as a secondary product of hyperpolarized [1-13C]-lactate can be detected in the heart.