Analysis of MR Thermometry Methods Using Tm-DOTMA and Water Proton : Experimental and Numerical Results

Bu S. Park¹, Martin J. Lizak², Leonardo M. Angelone¹, Sunder S. Rajan¹

We present experimental results of MR thermometry using a novel lanthanide complex, Tm-DOTMA. Results from imaging the water protons and the methyl protons of Tm-DOTMA were compared, using both chemical shift imaging (CSI) and conventional water proton reference frequency (PRF) methods in a Tm-DOTMA gel phantom. In addition, the experimental results were compared with the numerical simulation results. Because Tm-DOTMA has much higher temperature sensitivity (~0.57- 0.7 ppm/C) compared to water proton (~ 0.01 ppm/C), the thermometry using Tm-DOTMA can detect small temperature changes with high temporal resolution using CSI method.