Armin M. Nagel1, Florian M. Meise1, Marc-Andr Weber2, 3, Karin Jurkat-Rott4, Frank Lehmann-Horn4, Michael Bock1, Wolfhard Semmler1, Reiner Umathum1
1Dept. of Medical Physics in Radiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany; 2University Hospital of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; 3Dept. of Radiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany; 4Division of Neurophysiology, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany
Chlorine (Cl-) is the most important anion in the human body and is involved in many physiological processes. In this work, for the first time 35Cl-images of the human brain and the skeletal muscle were acquired on a whole body 7 T MRI system. 35Cl exhibits short relaxation times of T2f* = 1.1 ms and T2s* = 6.2 ms in brain parenchyma and T2f* = 0.3 0.8 ms and T2s* = 2.5 4.5 ms in skeletal muscle. Spatial resolutions of (6 mm) 3 (brain) and (11 mm) 3 (muscle) could be achieved at an SNR of 15 (brain parenchyma) and 7-15 (muscle).