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Quantitative measurement of the tissue sodium concentration (TSC) provides a metric for tissue cell volume fraction for monitoring tumor responses to therapy and neurodegeneration in the brain as well as applications outside the central nervous system such as the fixed charge density in cartilage. Despite the low detection sensitivity of the sodium MR signal compared to the proton signal and the requirement for a long repetition time to minimize longitudinal magnetization saturation, acquisition time has been reduced to less than 10 min for a nominal isotropic voxel size of 3.3 mm with the improved acquisition efficiency of twisted projection imaging (TPI) at 9.4 T. However, patient motion can degrade the accuracy of the quantification even within these acquisition times. Our goal has been to improve the robustness of quantitative sodium MR imaging by minimizing the impact of motion that may occur even in cooperative patients. We present a method to spatially encode a lower resolution navigator echo after encoding the free induction decay signal for the quantitative image at no time penalty. Both the imaging and navigator data are sampled with flexTPI readout trajectories. Navigator images are generated at a higher temporal resolution (∼1 min) albeit at lower spatial resolution (8 mm) than the quantitative high-resolution images. The multiple volumes of navigator echo images are then aligned to extract the translational and rotational motion parameters assuming rigid-body motion. These parameters are used to align the k-space data during the acquisition of each volume of the quantitative images. Our results show significantly reduced image blurring with this method when the subject's head moved randomly by up to 7° between the navigator acquisitions., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Sodium ion homeostasis is a fundamental property of viable tissue, allowing the tissue sodium concentration to be modeled as the tissue cell volume fraction. The modern neuropathology literature using ex vivo tissue from selected brain regions indicates that human brain cell density remains constant during normal aging and attributes the volume loss that occurs with advancing age to changes in neuronal size and dendritic arborization. Quantitative sodium MRI performed with the enhanced sensitivity of ultrahigh-field 9.4 T has been used to investigate tissue cell volume fraction during normal aging. This cross-sectional study (n = 49; 21-80 years) finds that the in vivo tissue cell volume fraction remains constant in all regions of the brain with advancing age in individuals who remain cognitively normal, extending the ex vivo literature reporting constant neuronal cell density across the normal adult age range. Cell volume fraction, as measured by quantitative sodium MRI, is decreased in diseases of cell loss, such as stroke, on a time scale of minutes to hours, and in response to treatment of brain tumors on a time scale of days to weeks. Neurodegenerative diseases often have prodromal periods of decades in which regional neuronal cell loss occurs prior to clinical presentation. If tissue cell volume fraction can detect such early pathology, this quantitative parameter may permit the objective measurement of preclinical disease progression. This current study in cognitively normal aging individuals provides the basis for the pursuance of investigations directed towards such neurodegenerative diseases., (Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Quantitative (31)P magnetic resonance imaging of the whole human brain is often time-consuming even at low spatial resolution due to the low concentrations, long T(1) relaxation times, and low detection sensitivity of phosphorus metabolites. We report herein the results of combining the increased detection sensitivity of an ultra-high field 9.4 T scanner designed for human imaging with a new pulse sequence termed simultaneously imaging of multiple spectral peaks with interleaved excitations and flexible twisted projection imaging readout trajectories to rapidly sample multiple resonances in the (31)P spectrum. The phosphocreatine and γ-adenosine triphosphate images, obtained simultaneously from the entire human head, are demonstrated at 1.5 cm isotropic nominal resolution in a total acquisition time of 33 min. The phosphocreatine/γ-adenosine triphosphate ratio calculated for brain parenchyma (1-2) and the superficial temporalis muscle (3-5) are in agreement with literature values., (Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Emerging applications of sodium bioscales derived from quantitative sodium magnetic resonance imaging assess temporal changes in regional sodium concentration over intervals that vary from hours (monitoring tissue viability in stroke) to weeks (monitoring brain tumor treatment during radiation therapy) or even years (monitoring progression of neurodegenerative disease). Accurate interpretation of such quantitative data requires precise registration between magnetic resonance imaging sessions to avoid session-to-session changes in partial volume effects between normal tissue (∼38 mM sodium concentration), lesions (variable sodium concentration), and cerebrospinal fluid (∼144 mM sodium concentration). The existing Automated Image Registration algorithm is shown to be suitable for rapid, accurate, and precise determination of the transform that aligns sodium magnetic resonance images. Implementation of this transform during image reconstruction from the k-space data is shown to produce smaller errors than conventional image-domain interpolation. Experimental results at 9.4 T and 3.0 T demonstrating this registration approach to sodium data illustrate preservation of quantification accuracy during alignment of sodium magnetic resonance images acquired from the same subject during different imaging sessions., (Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of 23-sodium ((23)Na) and 17-oxygen ((17)O) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 9.4 (T) on vital signs and cognitive function of the human brain., Materials and Methods: Vital sign and cognitive function measurements from healthy volunteers (N = 14) positioned outside and at isocenter of a 9.4 T scanner before and after (23)Na and (17)O MRI were compared for changes due to exposure to the static magnetic field and to the gradient switching and radiofrequency radiation during MRI., Results: Exposure to the 9.4 T static magnetic field and (23)Na and (17)O MRI at 105.92 MHz and 54.25 MHz, respectively, did not have a statistically significant (P > 0.05) effect on the vital signs or cognitive function of healthy normal adults., Conclusion: (23)Na and (17)O MRI of the human brain at 9.4 T does not have any readily demonstrated health risks reflected in vital signs or change in cognitive performance., ((c) 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)

The quantification of sodium MR images from an arbitrary intensity scale into a bioscale fosters image interpretation in terms of the spatially resolved biochemical process of sodium ion homeostasis. A methodology for quantifying tissue sodium concentration using a flexible twisted projection imaging sequence is proposed that allows for optimization of tradeoffs between readout time, signal-to-noise ratio efficiency, and sensitivity to static field susceptibility artifacts. The gradient amplitude supported by the slew rate at each k-space radius regularizes the readout gradient waveform design to avoid slew rate violation. Static field inhomogeneity artifacts are corrected using a frequency-segmented conjugate phase reconstruction approach, with field maps obtained quickly from coregistered proton imaging. High-quality quantitative sodium images have been achieved in phantom and volunteer studies with real isotropic spatial resolution of 7.5 x 7.5 x 7.5 mm(3) for the slow T(2) component in approximately 8 min on a clinical 3-T scanner. After correcting for coil sensitivity inhomogeneity and water fraction, the tissue sodium concentration in gray matter and white matter was measured to be 36.6 +/- 0.6 micromol/g wet weight and 27.6 +/- 1.2 micromol/g wet weight, respectively., ((c) 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)

The reduction of molecular oxygen to water is the final step of oxidative phosphorylation that couples adenosine triphosphate production to the reoxidation of reducing equivalents formed during the oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide. This coupling makes the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (CMRO(2)) an excellent reflection of the metabolic health of the brain. A multi-nuclear magnetic resonance (MR) imaging based method for CMRO(2) mapping is proposed. Oxygen consumption is determined by applying a new three-phase metabolic model for water generation and clearance to the changing 17-oxygen ((17)O) labeled water MR signal measured using quantitative (17)O MR imaging during inhalation of (17)O-enriched oxygen gas. These CMRO(2) data are corrected for the regional brain tissue mass computed from quantitative 23-sodium MR imaging of endogenous tissue sodium ions to derive quantitative results of oxygen consumption in micromoles O(2)/g tissue/minute that agree with literature results reported from positron emission tomography. The proposed technique is demonstrated in the human brain using a 9.4 T MR scanner optimized for human brain imaging., (Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Reconstruction of high-quality MR images requires precise knowledge of the dynamic gradient magnetic fields used to perform spatial encoding. System delays and eddy currents can perturb the gradient fields in both time and space and significantly degrade the image quality for acquisitions with an ultrashort echo time or with rapidly varying readout gradient waveforms. A technique for simultaneously characterizing and correcting the system delay and linear- and zero-order eddy currents of an MR system is proposed. A single set of calibration scans were used to compute a set of system constants that describe the effects of system delays and eddy currents to enable accurate reconstruction of data collected before uncorrected eddy currents have decayed. The ability of the proposed technique to reproducibly characterize small fixed delays (<50 micros) and short-time constant (<1 ms) eddy currents is demonstrated., ((c) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)