Yoshiharu Ohno1,2, Hisanobu Koyama1,
Takeshi Yoshikawa1, Nobukazu Aoyama2, Daisuke Takenaka1,
Keiko Matsumoto3, Masaya Takahashi4, Makoto Obara5,
Marc van Cauteren5, Kazuro Sugimura1
1Radiology, Kobe University
Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan; 2Radiology, Kobe
University Hospital, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan; 3Radiology, Yamanashi
Hospital of Social Insurance, Kofu, Yamanashi, Japan; 4Advanced
Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center,
Houston, TX, United States; 5Philips Healthcare, Tokyo, Japan
Recently, several investigators have tried to determine the utility of regional T2* measurement in the lung for assessment of pulmonary diseases in animal studies. We hypothesized that direct T2* measurement in the lung at 3.0 T MR system has a potential role to play as a method for pulmonary functional loss assessment and clinical stage classification as well as thin-section MDCT. The purpose of this study was to determine the capability of pulmonary MR imaging with ultra-short TEs (UTEs) in a 3.0 T system for pulmonary functional assessment and clinical stage classification in smokers.
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