In this study, by using chest CT, Gadolinium-enhanced perfusion MRI, and hyperpolarized xenon-129 ventilation and gas uptake MRI, we assessed the quantitative changes in tissue density, pulmonary perfusion and gas uptake in patients with COPD compared to normal subjects. We found evidence for compensatory pulmonary vasoconstriction to match impairment of ventilation, and also pulmonary shunt and dead space. By incorporating a new lobar segmentation method for proton MRI, we performed statistical analysis to evaluate the regional interrelationships among different measures. We demonstrated that xenon-129 MRI has high potential to identify changes of multiple aspects of lung physiology in one acquisition.
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