Measuring 'Impossible' Intermolecular Cross-Peaks to Improve Selectivity and Sensitivity in Breast MRI

摘要

This proposal focuses on development of a radically new method for breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which could improve detection of small tumors and reduce the unnecessary biopsies generated by false positives in conventional breast MRI and mammography. This method is based on my groups recent discovery of a significant omission in the decades old theoretical framework of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR, the spectroscopic precursor to MRI). We have shown that it is possible to detect strong signals from intermolecular resonances for example, simultaneously flipping up a water spin at one location while flipping down another water spin 100 um away even though such intermolecular zero-quantum coherences (iZQCs) would be predicted to be completely impossible to observe in the conventional formulation of NMR or MRI. This fundamentally new physics provides the basis for a potentially extremely useful contrast enhancement technique geared towards early detection and tumor grading. Our preliminary results demonstrated iZQC breast imaging on one healthy volunteer, with and without fat suppression. Unfortunately, the human approval process took the entire grant year, during which time the existing human machine was decommissioned. During this time, work progressed on phantom imaging and sequence improvement.