Oxygen-enhanced MR imaging of mice lungs.

Inhaled molecular oxygen has been widely used in humans to evaluate pulmonary ventilation using MRI. MR imaging has recently played a greater role in examining the morphologic and physiologic characteristics of mouse models of lung disease where structural changes are highly correlated to abnormalities in respiratory function. The motivation of this work is to develop oxygen-enhanced MR imaging for mice. Conventional human MR techniques cannot be directly applied to mouse imaging due to smaller dimensions and faster cardiac and respiratory physiology. This study examines the development of oxygen-enhanced MR as a noninvasive tool to assess regional ventilation in spontaneously breathing mice. An optimized cardiac-triggered, respiratory-gated fast spin-echo imaging sequence was developed to address demands of attaining adequate signal from the parenchyma, maintaining practical acquisition times, and compensating for rapid physiological motion. On average, a 20% T1-shortening effect was observed in mice breathing 100% oxygen as compared to air. The effect of ventilation was shown as a significant signal intensity increase of 11% to 16% in the mouse parenchyma with 100% oxygen inhalation. This work demonstrates that adequate contrast and resolution can be achieved using oxygen-enhanced MR to visualize ventilation, providing an effective technique to study ventilation defects in mice.