Motivated by the fact that the hyperpolarized MRI signal does not quadratically scale with field strength as for conventional MRI at thermal equilibrium, the achievable SNR at reduced field strengths is explored. It is demonstrated that for larger coil diameters, sample noise dominates electrical noise at 1.5T and achievable SNR becomes comparable to 3T. By adaptively reducing acquisition bandwidth to the reduced spectral span and given longer T2* decay, effective SNR at 1.5T exceeds 3T. Feasibility is demonstrated with the first in-vivo data acquired on a clinical 1.5T system using hyperpolarized 13C pyruvate.
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