title: Amide proton transfer imaging of human brain tumors at 3T.
abstract: Amide proton transfer (APT) imaging is a technique in which the nuclear magnetization of water-exchangeable amide protons of endogenous mobile proteins and peptides in tissue is saturated, resulting in a signal intensity decrease of the free water. In this work, the first human APT data were acquired from 10 patients with brain tumors on a 3T whole-body clinical scanner and compared with T1- (T1w) and T2-weighted (T2w), fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR), and diffusion images (fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)). The APT-weighted images provided good contrast between tumor and edema. The effect of APT was enhanced by an approximate 4% change in the water signal intensity in tumor regions compared to edema and normal-appearing white matter (NAWM). These preliminary data from patients with brain tumors show that the APT is a unique contrast that can provide complementary information to standard clinical MRI measures.
authors.affiliation: F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA.
authors.forename: Craig K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Schlosser
authors.forename: Peter C M
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: van Zijl
authors.forename: Martin G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Pomper
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Golay
authors.forename: Jinyuan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000577:Amides; D001834:Body Water / Q000378:metabolism; D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D011522:Protons; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D000577:Amides; D011522:Protons