Does It Affect the Quantification If Amide Proton Transfer Imaging Is Performed Pre- Or Post-Gadolinium Contrast Agent Administration?

Yee Kai Tee¹, Manus J. Donahue², Stephen J. Payne¹, Michael A. Chappell¹

Gadolinium contrast agents (Gd-CA) are widely used in clinical perfusion MRI. Amide proton transfer (APT) imaging is an emerging chemical exchange saturation transfer MRI technique for pH mapping that may provide complementary information to perfusion MRI in various clinical applications such as cancer and stroke. In this study, we compared the APT quantification pre- and post-Gd-CA infusion, and found that in some cases the APT effect showed significant difference after contrast administration even when using an asymmetry measure.