Longitudinal assessment of treatment effects on pulmonary ventilation using lH/3He MRI multivariate templates

摘要

The utility of pulmonary functional imaging techniques, such as hyperpolarized 3He MRI, has encouraged their inclusion in research studies for longitudinal assessment of disease progression and the study of treatment effects. We present methodology for performing voxelwise statistical analysis of ventilation maps derived from hyperpolarized 3He MRI which incorporates multivariate template construction using simultaneous acquisition of 1H and 3He images. Additional processing steps include intensity normalization, bias correction, 4-D longitudinal segmentation, and generation of expected ventilation maps prior to voxelwise regression analysis. Analysis is demonstrated on a cohort of eight individuals with diagnosed cystic fibrosis(CF)undergoing treatment imaged five times every two weeks with a prescribed treatment schedule.