(From left) Craig H. Meyer, PhD, and John P. Mugler, PhD
Researchers at the University of Virginia’s Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging are the recent recipients of a four-year NIH grant totaling approximately $2.6 million, which will support the development of proton and hyperpolarized xenon pulmonary MRI methods using the novel 0.55 Tesla scanner.
The principal investigators for this research are Craig H. Meyer, PhD, professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging, and John P. Mugler, PhD, professor in the Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging; along with Adrienne Campbell-Washburn, PhD, senior investigator at the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and director of the NIH’s Laboratory of Imaging Technology Program.
With chronic lung diseases as the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, the project aims to find a more efficient way to image relevant lung anatomy, tissue characterization, and pulmonary function. The researchers will investigate how the low-field Free.Max 0.55T MRI system developed by the NIH could create concurrent visualization of regional lung structure and function – which would improve accessibility of advanced pulmonary imaging capabilities.
As an additional benefit, the use of MRI would avoid radiation-related risks, making the imaging safer for children and pregnant patients.
In this research, the investigators will develop and evaluate new proton and hyperpolarized xenon MRI methods for lung imaging. For structural lung proton MRI, they want to improve spatial resolution and image contrast by combining spiral sampling and neural networks for denoising; meanwhile they also aim to develop the first methodology for hyperpolarized xenon imaging at this MRI field strength. Ultimately, they aim to deploy the methods for a multi-site validation study including healthy subjects and subjects with lung disease, and also for a cohort of patients with the rare lung disease lymphangioleiomyomatosis.
Originally published in Medicine in Motion.
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