Reproducibility Of Hyperpolarized Xenon 129 Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Spirometry and plethysmography provide gold standard measurements of obstructive lung disease, although these are global measurements of lung function made at the mouth, of a highly regionally heterogeneous disease. Hyperpolarized 129Xe magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive, non-radiation-based imaging tool for visualizing regional lung structure and function. However, the reproducibility of 129Xe MRI measurements has not yet been studied or determined. Hence, in this thesis, we evaluated the reproducibility of 129Xe MRI using quantitative measurements such as ventilation defect percent (VDP). We showed that 129Xe VDP had high intra-observer and inter-observer reproducibility for repeated scans acquired on the same-day and after 1-week and its reproducibility was comparable to that of 3He VDP. 129Xe VDP showed strong and significant correlations with pulmonary function tests. These results suggested that 129Xe VDP is reproducible over short periods of time and can be a reliable measurement to study pulmonary function in imaging studies.