Marzena M. Wylezinska1, Jordi L. Tremoleda1,
Joseph Habib2, Daniel Stuckey2, Willy Gsell1
1Biological Imaging Centre,
Imaging Sciences Department, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Imperial College
London, London, United Kingdom; 2National Heart & Lung
Institute, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
Aerobic metabolism is a vital and fundamental mechanism of attaining energy in mammals. Due to the diversity of organic substrates involved, the rate of aerobic metabolism can only be directly measured through the oxygen consumption. However, current non-invasive quantitative techniques (15O-PET, 17O-MRI) have been limited by both their expense and complexity. We propose a novel technique in which BOLD-dependent changes in T2* were measured in conjunction with saturating arterial blood with oxygen to extract the effects of the reduction of oxy-haemoglobin. Myocardial T2* was observed to increase by 15% thus offering a robust quantitative index of aerobic metabolism.