Cardiac metabolic imaging using hyperpolarized [1-13 C]lactate as a substrate

Hyperpolarized (HP) [1-¹³ C]lactate is an attractive alternative to [1-¹³ C]pyruvate as a substrate to investigate cardiac metabolism in vivo: it can be administered safely at a higher dose and can be polarized to a degree similar to pyruvate via dynamic nuclear polarization. While ¹³ C cardiac experiments using HP lactate have been performed in small animal models, they have not been demonstrated in large animal models or humans. Utilizing the same hardware and data acquisition methods as the first human HP ¹³ C cardiac study, ¹³ C metabolic images were acquired following injections of HP [1-¹³ C]lactate in porcine hearts. Data were also acquired using HP [1-¹³ C]pyruvate for comparison. The ¹³ C bicarbonate signal was localized to the myocardium and had a similar appearance with both substrates for all animals. No ¹³ C pyruvate signal was detected in the experiments following injection of HP ¹³ C lactate. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of injected lactate was 88 ± 4% of the SNR of injected pyruvate, and the SNR of bicarbonate in the experiments using lactate as the substrate was 52 ± 19% of the SNR in the experiments using pyruvate as the substrate. The lower SNR was likely due to the shorter T₁ of [1-¹³ C]lactate as compared with [1-¹³ C]pyruvate and the additional enzyme-catalyzed metabolic conversion step before the ¹³ C nuclei from [1-¹³ C]lactate were detected as ¹³ C bicarbonate. While challenges remain, the potential of HP lactate as a substrate for clinical metabolic imaging of human heart has been demonstrated.

Acquisition strategies for spatially resolved magnetic resonance detection of hyperpolarized nuclei

Hyperpolarization is an emerging method in magnetic resonance imaging that allows nuclear spin polarization of gases or liquids to be temporarily enhanced by up to five or six orders of magnitude at clinically relevant field strengths and administered at high concentration to a subject at the time of measurement. This transient gain in signal has enabled the non-invasive detection and imaging of gas ventilation and diffusion in the lungs, perfusion in blood vessels and tissues, and metabolic conversion in cells, animals, and patients. The rapid development of this method is based on advances in polarizer technology, the availability of suitable probe isotopes and molecules, improved MRI hardware and pulse sequence development. Acquisition strategies for hyperpolarized nuclei are not yet standardized and are set up individually at most sites depending on the specific requirements of the probe, the object of interest, and the MRI hardware. This review provides a detailed introduction to spatially resolved detection of hyperpolarized nuclei and summarizes novel and previously established acquisition strategies for different key areas of application.

Cancer in the crosshairs: targeting cancer metabolism with hyperpolarized carbon-13 MRI technology

Magnetic resonance (MR)-based hyperpolarized (HP) 13 C metabolic imaging is under active pursuit as a new clinical diagnostic method for cancer detection, grading, and monitoring of therapeutic response. Following the tremendous success of metabolic imaging by positron emission tomography, which already plays major roles in clinical oncology, the added value of HP 13 C MRI is emerging. Aberrant glycolysis and central carbon metabolism is a hallmark of many forms of cancer. The chemical transformations associated with these pathways produce metabolites ranging in general from three to six carbons, and are dependent on the redox state and energy charge of the tissue. The significant changes in chemistry associated with flux through these pathways imply that HP imaging can take advantage of the underlying chemical shift information encoded into an MR experiment to produce images of the injected substrate as well as its metabolites. However, imaging of HP metabolites poses unique constraints on pulse sequence design related to detection of X-nuclei, decay of the HP magnetization due to T1 , and the consumption of HP signal by the inspection pulses. Advancements in the field continue to depend critically on customization of MRI systems and pulse sequences for optimized detection of HP 13 C signals, focused largely on extracting the maximum amount of information during the short lifetime of the HP magnetization. From a clinical perspective, the success of HP 13 C MRI of cancer will largely depend upon the utility of HP pyruvate for the detection of lactate pools associated with the Warburg effect, though several other agents are also under investigation, with novel agents continually being formulated. In this review, the salient aspects of HP 13 C imaging will be highlighted, with an emphasis on both technological challenges and the biochemical aspects of HP experimental design.

Intensity correction for multichannel hyperpolarized 13C imaging of the heart

PURPOSE

Develop and test an analytic correction method to correct the signal intensity variation caused by the inhomogeneous reception profile of an eight-channel phased array for hyperpolarized (13) C imaging.

THEORY AND METHODS

Fiducial markers visible in anatomical images were attached to the individual coils to provide three dimensional localization of the receive hardware with respect to the image frame of reference. The coil locations and dimensions were used to numerically model the reception profile using the Biot-Savart Law. The accuracy of the coil sensitivity estimation was validated with images derived from a homogenous (13) C phantom. Numerical coil sensitivity estimates were used to perform intensity correction of in vivo hyperpolarized (13) C cardiac images in pigs.

RESULTS

In comparison to the conventional sum-of-squares reconstruction, improved signal uniformity was observed in the corrected images.

CONCLUSION

The analytical intensity correction scheme was shown to improve the uniformity of multichannel image reconstruction in hyperpolarized [1-(13) C]pyruvate and (13) C-bicarbonate cardiac MRI. The method is independent of the pulse sequence used for (13) C data acquisition, simple to implement and does not require additional scan time, making it an attractive technique for multichannel hyperpolarized (13) C MRI.

High-throughput hyperpolarized (13)C metabolic investigations using a multi-channel acquisition system

Magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy of hyperpolarized (HP) compounds such as [1-(13)C]-pyruvate have shown tremendous potential for offering new insight into disease and response to therapy. New applications of this technology in clinical research and care will require extensive validation in cells and animal models, a process that may be limited by the high cost and modest throughput associated with dynamic nuclear polarization. Relatively wide spectral separation between [1-(13)C]-pyruvate and its chemical endpoints in vivo are conducive to simultaneous multi-sample measurements, even in the presence of a suboptimal global shim. Multi-channel acquisitions could conserve costs and accelerate experiments by allowing acquisition from multiple independent samples following a single dissolution. Unfortunately, many existing preclinical MRI systems are equipped with only a single channel for broadband acquisitions. In this work, we examine the feasibility of this concept using a broadband multi-channel digital receiver extension and detector arrays that allow concurrent measurement of dynamic spectroscopic data from ex vivo enzyme phantoms, in vitro anaplastic thyroid carcinoma cells, and in vivo in tumor-bearing mice. Throughput and the cost of consumables were improved by up to a factor of four. These preliminary results demonstrate the potential for efficient multi-sample studies employing hyperpolarized agents.

Small animal cardiovascular MR imaging and spectroscopy

The use of MR imaging and spectroscopy for studying cardiovascular disease processes in small animals has increased tremendously over the past decade. This is the result of the remarkable advances in MR technologies and the increased availability of genetically modified mice. MR techniques provide a window on the entire timeline of cardiovascular disease development, ranging from subtle early changes in myocardial metabolism that often mark disease onset to severe myocardial dysfunction associated with end-stage heart failure. MR imaging and spectroscopy techniques play an important role in basic cardiovascular research and in cardiovascular disease diagnosis and therapy follow-up. This is due to the broad range of functional, structural and metabolic parameters that can be quantified by MR under in vivo conditions non-invasively. This review describes the spectrum of MR techniques that are employed in small animal cardiovascular disease research and how the technological challenges resulting from the small dimensions of heart and blood vessels as well as high heart and respiratory rates, particularly in mice, are tackled.

Directly detected (55)Mn MRI: application to phantoms for human hyperpolarized (13)C MRI development

In this work we demonstrate for the first time directly detected manganese-55 ((55)Mn) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using a clinical 3T MRI scanner designed for human hyperpolarized (13)C clinical studies with no additional hardware modifications. Due to the similar frequency of the (55)Mn and (13)C resonances, the use of aqueous permanganate for large, signal-dense, and cost-effective "(13)C" MRI phantoms was investigated, addressing the clear need for new phantoms for these studies. Due to 100% natural abundance, higher intrinsic sensitivity, and favorable relaxation properties, (55)Mn MRI of aqueous permanganate demonstrates dramatically increased sensitivity over typical (13)C phantom MRI, at greatly reduced cost as compared with large (13)C-enriched phantoms. A large sensitivity advantage (22-fold) was demonstrated. A cylindrical phantom (d=8 cm) containing concentrated aqueous sodium permanganate (2.7 M) was scanned rapidly by (55)Mn MRI in a human head coil tuned for (13)C, using a balanced steady state free precession acquisition. The requisite penetration of radiofrequency magnetic fields into concentrated permanganate was investigated by experiments and high frequency electromagnetic simulations, and found to be sufficient for (55)Mn MRI with reasonably sized phantoms. A sub-second slice-selective acquisition yielded mean image signal-to-noise ratio of ~60 at 0.5 cm(3) spatial resolution, distributed with minimum central signal ~40% of the maximum edge signal. We anticipate that permanganate phantoms will be very useful for testing HP (13)C coils and methods designed for human studies.