Justin Yat Cheong Lau1, 2, Albert P. Chen3, William Dominguez-Viqueira2, Gang Wu4, Charles H. Cunningham1, 2
1Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 2Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 3GE Healthcare, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 4Department of Chemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
In this work, we characterize longitudinal relaxation of hyperpolarized [1-13C], [2-13C], and [1,2-13C2] pyruvate in solution and in pig blood at 7 T. We show that single-labelled pyruvate in solution exhibits shorter T1 at 7 T as compared to 3 T while dual-labelled pyruvate exhibits comparable T1 at 3 T and 7 T in solution and in blood. We argue that experiments with dual-labelled pyruvate may benefit from a greater chemical shift dispersion at 7 T with minimal T1 penalty. Results from this work may further the understanding of relaxation mechanisms that affect hyperpolarized pyruvate.