Jamie Near1,2, Robert Bartha1,2
1Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
A method is described for quantitative sodium MRI of the mouse prostate at 9.4 Tesla. A radiofrequency coil was constructed and dual-tuned to both the proton and sodium frequencies. High resolution (125x125x300 μm) T2 weighted proton images were obtained for identification of the prostate boundary, and quantitative sodium images were acquired with 1 mm isotropic resolution. In the prostates of 5 healthy mice, the mean sodium concentration was 13014 mM. In future experiments, this quantitative sodium imaging technique will be applied to a transgenic mouse model of prostate cancer to determine if sodium concentrations are altered in cancerous prostate tissue.
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