Development and application of methods to quantify spatial and temporal hyperpolarized 3He MRI ventilation dynamics: preliminary results in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Hyperpolarized helium-3 (3He) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as a non-invasive research method for quantifying lung structural and functional changes, enabling direct visualization in vivo at high spatial and temporal resolution. Here we described the development of methods for quantifying ventilation dynamics in response to salbutamol in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Whole body 3.0 Tesla Excite 12.0 MRI system was used to obtain multi-slice coronal images acquired immediately after subjects inhaled hyperpolarized 3He gas. Ventilated volume (VV), ventilation defect volume (VDV) and thoracic cavity volume (TCV) were recorded following segmentation of 3He and 1H images respectively, and used to calculate percent ventilated volume (PVV) and ventilation defect percent (VDP). Manual segmentation and Otsu thresholding were significantly correlated for VV (r=.82, p=.001), VDV (r=.87 p=.0002), PVV (r=.85, p=.0005), and VDP (r=.85, p=.0005). The level of agreement between these segmentation methods was also evaluated using Bland-Altman analysis and this showed that manual segmentation was consistently higher for VV (Mean=.22 L, SD=.05) and consistently lower for VDV (Mean=-.13, SD=.05) measurements than Otsu thresholding. To automate the quantification of newly ventilated pixels (NVp) post-bronchodilator, we used translation, rotation, and scaling transformations to register pre-and post-salbutamol images. There was a significant correlation between NVp and VDV (r=-.94 p=.005) and between percent newly ventilated pixels (PNVp) and VDP (r=- .89, p=.02), but not for VV or PVV. Evaluation of 3He MRI ventilation dynamics using Otsu thresholding and landmark-based image registration provides a way to regionally quantify functional changes in COPD subjects after treatment with beta-agonist bronchodilators, a common COPD and asthma therapy.

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