19F MR Imaging of Ventilation and Diffusion in Excised Lungs

Perfluorinated gases, particularly C2F6, are potentially suitable alternatives to hyperpolarized noble gases for pulmonary airspace spin density and diffusion MRI. This work focuses mainly on 19F imaging of C2F6 gas in healthy and emphysematous explanted lungs, avoiding regulatory issues of human in vivo measurements. Three-dimensional gradient echo and spin echo spin density images of human lungs can be made in 10 s with adequate signal-to-noise, demonstrating the feasibility for breathing dynamics to be captured during a succession of short breath holds. As expected, the spin echo images have much smaller susceptibility artifacts than the gradient echo images.