Purpose

Imaging of nuclei other than protons such as sodium (²³Na), chlorine (³⁵Cl) or potassium (³⁹K) largely benefits from ultra-high magnetic field strengths since signal-to-noise increases at least linearly with field strength. Imaging of these nuclei requires additional hard- (e.g., radiofrequency coils) and software (e.g., pulse sequences and dedicated post-processing methods). These nuclei play major roles in human biology which renders in vivo imaging of these nuclei desirable.

Key points of the presentation

- ²³Na MRI poses different physical and technical challenges on the imaging techniques.
- ²³Na MRI requires specific hard- and software that are typically not available on standard clinical MRI systems.
- Quadrupolar nuclei experience strong interactions with local electric field gradients which result in rapid transverse relaxation.
- To partially compensate the low SNR of X-nuclei MRI, voxel volumes are typically several orders of magnitude larger compared to 1H MRI.
- Several in vivo studies highlighted the potential of ²³Na MRI as a promising biomarker for neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration in brain diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

Acknowledgements

X-nuclei imaging study group.

References

No reference found.