Abstract #1350

Holmes J, Xiang Z, O'Halloran R, Braun R, Sorkness R, Pyzalski R, Peterson E, Fain S, Love R

Imaging holds promise for longitudinal assessment of lung transplant to assess individual organ viability regionally. The hypothesis of this study is that non-invasive MR imaging techniques can be used for early assessment of organ viability in lung transplant. Four rats received left lung transplants and were imaged at 1 and 2 weeks post-transplant using hyperpolarized He-3 MRI, T1-weighted proton MRI, and FDG PET. Changes detected in imaging were correlated to pathology of the lungs after 2 weeks. This work demonstrates the ability to assess transplant viability qualitatively using MRI techniques during longitudinal small animal studies.