title: Imaging of sodium in the brain: a brief review.
abstract: Sodium-based MRI plays a vital role in the study of metabolism and can unveil valuable information about emerging and existing pathology--in particular in the human brain. Sodium is the second most abundant MR active nucleus in living tissue and, due to its quadrupolar nature, has magnetic properties not common to conventional proton MRI, which can reveal further insights, such as information on the compartmental distribution of intra- and extracellular sodium. Nevertheless, the use of sodium nuclei for imaging comes at the expense of a lower sensitivity and significantly reduced relaxation times, making in vivo sodium studies feasible only at high magnetic field strength and by the use of dedicated pulse sequences. Hybrid imaging combining sodium MRI and positron emission tomography (PET) simultaneously is a novel and promising approach to access information on dynamic metabolism with much increased, PET-derived specificity. Application of this new methodology is demonstrated herein using examples from tumour imaging.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine-4, Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, 52425, Jülich, Germany.|Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.|Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) - Translational Brain Medicine, Aachen and Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: N Jon
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine-4, Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, 52425, Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: Wieland A
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Worthoff
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine-4, Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, 52425, Jülich, Germany.|Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) - Translational Brain Medicine, Aachen and Jülich, Germany.|Department of Nuclear Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Karl-Josef
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Langen
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D012964:Sodium / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D012964:Sodium
keywords: MR-PET hybrid imaging; acquisition methods; applications; clinical applications; neurological; neuroscience; sodium imaging