Raffi Kalayciyan1, Friedrich Wetterling1,
Sabine Neudecker2, Lothar R. Schad1
1Computer Assisted Clinical
Medicine, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany; 2Medical
Research Center, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany
Tissue sodium concentration (TSC) serving as a biomarker for tissue viability and integrity has been investigated using the 3D-Ultrashort Echo Time (3D-UTE) to explore the corticomedullary sodium concentration gradient in the rat kidney. For the first time, 3D-UTE allowed TE as short as 60s to record 23Na MR images of rats kidneys. Hence, the low SNR in sodium renal MRI has been improved over currently used 3D-GRE imaging technique by factor 3 for in vivo 23Na MRI which will enable the measurement of TSC as a marker for tissue viability and tissue integrity changes after kidney transplant.