Abstract #0744

Effect of Saturation Pulse Length on Parallel Transmission Based Amide Proton Transfer (APT) Imaging of Different Brain Tumor Types

Osamu Togao¹, Takashi Yoshiura¹, Jochen Keupp², Akio Hiwatashi¹, Koji Yamashita¹, Kazufumi Kikuchi¹, Yuriko Suzuki³, Koji Sagiyama⁴, Masaya Takahashi⁴, Hiroshi Honda¹

¹Clinical Radiology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan; ²Philips Research, Hamburg, Germany; ³Philips Electronics, Japan; ⁴Advanced Imaging Research Center, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States

Amide proton transfer (APT) imaging employs the exchange between protons of free tissue water and the amide groups (-NH) of endogenous mobile proteins and peptides, imaged by a saturation transfer technique. In this imaging technique, the length of RF saturation (Tsat) is an important parameter for sensitivity. A technique based on parallel RF transmission was demonstrated, which allows arbitrarily long RF pulses (~5s) via amplifier alternation in clinical scanners. We evaluated the Tsat dependence of the APT contrast in human brain tumors and to demonstrate the efficacy of long Tsat achieved by the parallel RF transmission based technique.