Dynamic evaluation of acute lung injury using hyperpolarized ¹²⁹ Xe magnetic resonance

Prognosticating acute lung injury (ALI) is challenging, in part because of a lack of sensitive biomarkers. Hyperpolarized gas magnetic resonance (MR) has unique advantages in pulmonary function measurement and can provide promising biomarkers for the assessment of lung injuries. Herein, we employ hyperpolarized ¹²⁹ Xe MRI and generate a number of imaging biomarkers to detect the pulmonary physiological and morphological changes during the progression of ALI in an animal model. We find the measured ratio of ¹²⁹ Xe in red blood cells to interstitial tissue/plasma (RBC/TP) is significantly lower in the ALI group on the second (0.32 ± 0.03, p = 0.004), seventh (0.23 ± 0.03, p < 0.001), and 14th (0.29 ± 0.04, p = 0.001) day after lipopolysaccharide treatment compared with that in the control group (0.41 ± 0.04). In addition, significant differences are also observed for RBC/TP measurements between the second and seventh day (p = 0.001) and between the seventh and 14th day (p = 0.018) in the ALI group after treatment. Besides RBC/TP, significant differences are also observed in the measured exchange time constant (T) on the second (p = 0.038) and seventh day (p = 0.009) and in the measured apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and alveolar surface-to-volume ratio (SVR) on the 14th day (ADC: p = 0.009 and SVR: p = 0.019) after treatment in the ALI group compared with that in the control group. These findings indicate that the parameters measured with ¹²⁹ Xe MR can detect the dynamic changes in pulmonary structure and function in an ALI animal model.