Spectroscopic imaging of the hyperpolarized xenon-129 dissolved in the pulmonary tissues and blood can probe regional gas exchange within the lung. However, estimates of the frequency shifts and decay rates of the dissolved-phase signal from whole-lung spectroscopy are confounded by the large magnetic field inhomogeneities of the lung. In this work, we develop a regularized, model-based reconstruction that estimates the spectral properties of pulmonary HP 129Xe to improve image quality. Importantly, we show that the estimated r2* decay rates of dissolved-phase compartments differ substantially from those estimated in whole lung spectroscopy and are a significant biomarker of gas-exchange.
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