Hyperpolarized 129Xe MRI offers the ability to analyze pulmonary gas transfer by imaging 129Xe dissolved in red blood cells (RBCs) separately from 129Xe in other tissues. A notable feature of the dissolved 129Xe signal is the presence of small cardiogenic oscillations in the 129Xe RBC signal, which have been used to characterized global abnormalities in pulmonary microvascular hemodynamics. Here, we demonstrate that these cardiogenic oscillations can be mapped 3-dimensionally to image capillary bed hemodynamics. Our approach uses keyhole reconstruction of standard 129Xe gas exchange MR acquisitions. Metrics obtained from these maps distinguished healthy from disease cohorts and predicted disease progression.
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