Chengbo Wang1, Talissa A. Altes1,
John P. Mugler, III1,2, Eduard E. de Lange1, Kai
Ruppert1, William F. Hersman3,4, Isabel M. Dregely3,
Iulian Ruset, 3,4, Stephen Ketel4, Sylvia Verbanck5
1Radiology, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA, United States; 2Biomedical Engineering,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States; 3Physics,
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States; 4Xemed
LLC, Durham, NH, United States; 5Respiratory Division, University
Hospital UZ Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Long-time-scale
3He and 129Xe diffusion was measured in human lungs and was found to strongly
depend on the diffusion times. The computer simulation agreed well with
experimental measurements using only the intra-acinar structure, suggesting
that long-time-scale ADC was dominated by intra-acinar structure in the lung.
The importance of the intra-acinar structure and collateral channels may vary
with varying parameters such as tag wavelength. Intra- and interacinar collateral channels
can lead to considerable relative ADC increases, suggesting that noble gas
diffusion may be sensitive to mild degree of collateral channels which may
occur in early smoking related lung disease.
Keywords