Ruud B. van Heeswijk1, 2, Maxime Pellegrin3, Lucia Mazzolai3, Ulrich Flgel4, Juerg Schwitter5, Matthias Stuber1, 2
1Department of Radiology, University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland; 2Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), Lausanne, Switzerland; 3Service of Angiology, University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland; 4Institute for Cardiovascular Physiology, Heinrich Heine University, Dsseldorf, Germany; 5Center for Cardiac Magnetic Resonance and Cardiology Service, University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland
A perfluorocarbon emulsion was intravenously administered in ApoE-knockout mice. Next, fluorine-19 MRI was performed multiple times after injection in order to quantitatively determine the time course of perfluorocarbon uptake in regions where atherosclerotic plaques often occur. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at these locations reached an optimum of ~10 at 6-8 days after injection.