Duan Xu1,
Zinaida Vexler2, Subramaniam Sukumar1, Robert A. Bok1,
John Kurhanewicz1, Xiaoliang Zhang1
1Department
of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco,
San Francisco, CA, United States; 2Department of Neurology,
University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States
Hypoxic-ischemic injury occurs in approximately 25,000 live births in the US every year. Injuries evolve over days to weeks, with some neurons rapidly undergoing necrotic cell death while others suffer delayed impairment in energy metabolism and die more slowly. Animal studies involving rats have shown that average diffusivity is reduced on diffusion weighted imaging, lactate is increased on proton MRS, and ratio of phosphocreatine (PCr) to inorganic phosphate (Pi) is increased during hypoxic-ischemic insult. This preliminary study is designed to test the ability of using hyperpolarized 13C metabolic imaging to assess tissue metabolism after ischemic insult.