Phillip Zhe Sun1
1Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, USA
An empirical solution based on a 2-pool exchange model has been proposed to describe CEST MRI, providing tremendous insights for quantitative CEST imaging. Nevertheless, the empirical solution is only a first order approximation, and susceptible to non-negligible errors when quantifying CEST imaging of fast exchange groups under practical conditions (i.e. intermediate RF powers). To properly guide future development of more sensitive exogenous PARACEST/LIPOCEST agents, we modified the simplistic empirical equation with a second order correction term, which showed good agreement with numerical simulation.