Peder E. Z. Larson1, Ralph Hurd2, Adam B. Kerr3, Robert Bok1, John Kurhanewicz1, Daniel B. Vigneron1
1Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California - San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2Global Applied Science Lab, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, USA; 3Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
We have developed and applied a novel stimulated echo sequence for hyperpolarized 13C metabolic imaging. The stimulated echo encoding is used with injected [1-13C]-pyruvate to suppress metabolites that are flowing by including a mixing time (1 s) between the encoding and acquisition. Only stationary spins are refocused, thus providing unique information about the mobility of the metabolites. In a mouse prostate cancer model, this method increased the discrimination between tumor and normal tissues based on 13C-lactate detection, highlighting the differences in metabolite flow.