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Abstract #0906

Evaluating Bronchodilator Effects in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease using Hyperpolarized Helium-3 Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Miranda Kirby1,2, Roya Etemad-Rezai3, David G. McCormack4, Grace Parraga1,5

1Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Medical Biophysics, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; 3Department of Medical Imaging, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; 4Division of Respirology, Department of Medicine, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; 5Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering, the University of Western Ontario, London , Ontario, Canada


The objective of this study was to evaluate short-acting bronchodilator effects in fourteen subjects with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) using hyperpolarized helium-3 (3He) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), spirometry, and plethysmography before and after administration of salbutamol. 3He MRI ventilation segmentation was performed using a semi-automated k-means clustering algorithm and 3He ADC was calculated using diffusion-weighted imaging. 3He MRI detected significant reductions in 3He clusters that contained no or diminished MR signal (p<.0001) and significant improvements in 3He ventilation clusters (p<.05), but no changes in 3He ADC post-salbutamol (p=.56), indicating that regional distribution of ventilation improves in COPD patients post-bronchodilator.