Peter E. Thelwall1,
2, Christopher R. Fox2, Hannah Walden3, Andrew
Fisher2
1Newcastle
Magnetic Resonance Centre, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United
Kingdom; 2Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University,
Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; 3Biomedical and Biomolecular
Research Centre, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Inert fluorinated gases can be employed for non-invasive MRI measurement of lung ventilation properties. We demonstrate that the chemical shift difference between two fluorinated gases can be exploited to for spatially separated images of the two components of a gas mixture via 19F MRI. Use of two such tracer gases in a gas wash-in / wash-out experiment allows simultaneous and dynamic regional measurement of lung volume, ventilation dead volume, and ratio of wash-in : wash-out gas.
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