Lithium is a major treatment for bipolar disorder (BD) and the likelihood of a favourable response may be determined by its distribution in the brain. Lithium can be directly detected by magnetic resonance (MR), but this is challenging compared to proton MRI due to lithium’s low therapeutic concentration in brain (<1mM). To overcome this challenge, we implemented a highly efficient balanced steady state free precession (b-SSFP) 7Li-MRI method. We report a 3D 7Li-MRI acquisition with 25mm isotropic resolution, acquired in 8 minutes using a 3T clinical scanner, demonstrating heterogeneity in lithium concentration within the brain in subjects with BD (n=14).
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