Assessment of pulmonary perfusion in a single shot using SEEPAGE

To present a single-shot perfusion imaging sequence that does not require contrast agents or a subtraction of a tag and a control image to create the perfusion-weighted contrast. The proposed method is based on SEEPAGE.

Experiments with healthy volunteers were performed to qualitatively and quantitatively obtain pulmonary perfusion values in coronal as well as sagittal orientation. In addition, a first experiment with a lung cancer patient was performed to explore the potentials of SEEPAGE in a clinical application.

All experiments clearly showed a perfusion-weighted contrast, providing clinical quality images with high spatial resolution. The quantified perfusion rates were consistent in the different imaging orientations and covered the interval of 1.00-4.00 mL/min/mL. In addition, the gravitational dependence of pulmonary perfusion, the influence of adiabatic pulse duration on signal intensity, and the tracer saturation effect were examined. In the patient examination the presented technique provided additional information of the lung deficiency compared to a conventional anatomical image.

SEEPAGE has proved to be a robust and reproducible technique for obtaining perfusion-weighted images in a single measurement and for quantifying pulmonary perfusion using an additional reference scan. Furthermore, the proposed method shows promise for future clinical application.