Dehydration assessment via a portable, single sided magnetic resonance sensor

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Medical Imaging
• Physiology

Background:

• Undiagnosed dehydration negatively impacts health across diverse populations.
• Current diagnostic methods for dehydration involve invasive sampling or are unreliable due to confounding factors like fluid intake and physical activity.
• There is a critical need for accessible, noninvasive dehydration diagnostics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a portable magnetic resonance (MR) sensor for quantifying intramuscular fluid shifts.
• To assess the sensor's ability to detect dehydration-induced volume depletion noninvasively.
• To establish a portable, low-cost diagnostic tool for dehydration monitoring.

Main Methods:

• A mouse model of thermal dehydration was used to induce fluid loss.
• Multicomponent T2 relaxometry was employed with both a benchtop NMR system and a novel, miniaturized portable MR sensor (0.28 T).
• Measurements were localized to skeletal muscle tissue, utilizing a Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill pulse sequence for rapid data acquisition (~4 min).

Main Results:

• The portable MR sensor demonstrated excellent agreement (R² = 0.996) with benchtop NMR measurements.
• Thermal dehydration induced significant weight loss (4-11%) in the mouse model.
• The portable MR sensor accurately identified dehydration-induced fluid loss by measuring changes in skeletal muscle T2 values.

Conclusions:

• Multicomponent T2 relaxometry using a miniaturized MR sensor offers a noninvasive, portable method for assessing dehydration.
• This technology provides a low-cost, automated alternative to complex MRI systems for point-of-care dehydration monitoring.
• The developed sensor shows promise as a versatile tool for widespread dehydration assessment.