Quantification of Pulmonary Ventilation using Hyperpolarized 3He Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Smoking-related lung diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are projected to have claimed the lives of more than 30,000 Canadians in 2010. The poor prognosis and lack of new treatment options for lung diseases associated with smoking are largely due to the inadequacy of current techniques for evaluating lung function. Hyperpolarized 3He magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a relatively new technique, and quantitative measurements derived from these images, specifically the ventilation defect volume (VDV) and ventilation defect percent (VDP) have the potential to provide new sensitive measures of lung function. Here, we evaluate the reproducibility of VDV, and explore the sensitivity of these measurements in healthy young and elderly volunteers, and subjects with smoking-related lung disease (COPD and radiation-induced lung injury (RILI)). Our results show that 3He MRI measurements of ventilation have high short-term reproducibility in both healthy volunteers and subjects with COPD. Additionally, we report that these measurements are sensitive to age-related changes in lung function. Finally, in RILI we show that measurements of lung function derived from 3He MRI are sensitive to longitudinal changes in lung function following treatment, while in COPD we report that using VDP in conjunction with structural measurements of disease (using the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) derived from diffusion-weighted images) may provide a new method for phenotyping this smoking-related lung disease.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph D

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Medical Biophysics

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Western Ontario

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Mathew, Lindsay

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Parraga, Grace

• Hyperpolarized 3He magnetic resonance imaging
• functional lung imaging
• ventilation defect
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• lung cancer
• radiation-induced lung injury

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/36193

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/36193