Abstract #0548

Pulmonary 3He MRI of Pediatric Subjects with Risk Factors for Asthma

Robert V. Cadman¹, Jionghan Dai¹, Michael D. Evans², Daniel J. Jackson³, James E. Gern³, Robert F. Lemanske Jr.³, Sean B. Fain¹

¹Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA; ²Biostatistics & Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA; ³Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

Pulmonary ³He MRI was performed on 9- and 10-year-old subjects who had been enrolled at birth in a longitudinal study of asthma development. Separate diffusion-weighted radial stack-of-stars and 3-dimensional radial dynamic series were acquired for each subject. Root-mean-square diffusion length of ³He was found to correlate with both current asthma diagnosis and history of human rhinovirus infection associated with wheezing illnesses during preschool ages. Ventilation defects observed in dynamic images were correlated with current asthma diagnosis.