Abstract #1460

Asthma Airway Morphology and Hyperpolarized 3He Magnetic Resonance Imaging Ventilation Defects

Sarah Svenningsen¹,², Danielle Starr¹, Harvey Coxson³, Nigel Paterson⁴, David G. McCormack⁴, Miranda Kirby¹,², Grace Parraga¹,²

¹Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; ²Department of Medical Biophysics, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; ³James Hogg Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; ⁴Division of Respirology, Department of Medicine, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

In a group of asthmatic and healthy volunteers (HV), we quantitatively evaluated the relationship between hyperpolarized ³He MRI ventilation abnormalities and computed tomography (CT) airway measurements in a non-random region-of-interest (ROI) spatially identified by ³He MRI to contain ventilation defects. CT-derived regional WA% (p=.009) and LA (p=.01) and ³He MRI-derived whole lung VDP (p=.01) and regional VDP (p=.02) were significantly different between asthmatics and HV. Regional VDP was significantly correlated with WA% (r=.48, p=.02) and LA (r=-.51, p=.01). These results provide a better understanding of the underlying airway morphology related to heterogeneous ventilation abnormalities in asthma.