Simultaneous imaging of 13C metabolism and 1H structure: technical considerations and potential applications

Real‐time imaging of ¹³C metabolism in vivo has been enabled by recent advances in hyperpolarization. As a result of the inherently low natural abundance of endogenous ¹³C nuclei, hyperpolarized ¹³C images lack structural information that could be used to aid in motion detection and anatomical registration. Motion before or during the ¹³C acquisition can therefore result in artifacts and misregistration that may obscure measures of metabolism. In this work, we demonstrate a method to simultaneously image both ¹H and ¹³C nuclei using a dual‐nucleus spectral–spatial radiofrequency excitation and a fully coincident readout for rapid multinuclear spectroscopic imaging. With the appropriate multinuclear hardware, and the means to simultaneously excite and receive on both channels, this technique is straightforward to implement requiring little to no increase in scan time. Phantom and in vivo experiments were performed with both Cartesian and spiral trajectories to validate and illustrate the utility of simultaneous acquisitions. Motion compensation of dynamic metabolic measurements acquired during free breathing was demonstrated using motion tracking derived from ¹H data. Simultaneous multinuclear imaging provides structural ¹H and metabolic ¹³C images that are correlated both spatially and temporally, and are therefore amenable to joint ¹H and ¹³C analysis and correction of structure–function images. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.