Imaging of a mixture of hyperpolarized 3He and 129Xe

With the use of hyperpolarized gases, a great number of experiments have been carried out in order to improve the diagnostics of the lung, both from a structural and a functional point of view. He-3 is best suited for structural studies, whereas Xe-129 gives more detailed information about the functionality of the lung because it enters the bloodstream. In this work, we propose the use of a gas mixture to perform consecutive analysis of lung structure and functionality upon the delivery of a single bolus of gas. We show images of a helium-xenon gas mixture in the presence of a small amount of liquid toluene in order to demonstrate how both nuclei can be detected independently, extracting the spectroscopic information provided by the Xe-129 spectra and obtaining an image with high sensitivity for He-3. A second experiment performed on a dissected mouse lung was used to demonstrate how the mixture of gases can enhance sensitivity in the larger airways of the lung. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.