Pulsed Saturation Transfer for Quantifying CEST in the Presence of MT

Kimberly L. Desmond¹, Greg J. Stanisz^1,2

The quantification of the CEST effect in-vivo is complicated by the presence of immobile macromolecules, which additionally results in a large MT effect. The MT component has a significant impact on the magnitude of the CEST effect, which reduces the validity of asymmetry-based techniques. We propose a method by which the parameters for both CEST and MT pool can be determined independently by fitting a three pool model to data from a pulsed saturation transfer experiment. This method is tested on a set of three phantoms, containing 1M ammonium chloride, 2% agar, and both compounds combined.