Purpose: This study attempted to assess the feasibility and the accuracy of lung contrast enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) perfusion imaging in the evaluation of 20 healthy volunteers and to correlate the intensity/time (I/T) curves with the pulmonary physiological criteria.
Material and methods: After an informed consensus, twenty no-smoker subjects, without any present or past pulmonary pathologies, were studied by means of an ultra-fast gradient echo sequence after a Gd-DTPA intravenous administration. The acquisitions were performed in coronal and sagittal planes, in supine and prone position, in breath holding. An ulterior acquisition was performed in only five cases immediately after 2-3 minutes of physical exercise.
Results: All the examinations, reviewed according to a visual score by three independent observers, resulted fairly interpretable. The I/T curves, obtained in post-processing evaluation, have the same trend in all cases and are correlated to the lung physiological criteria: the position changes of the examined subjects confirm the gravity dependence of perfusion; the study performed immediately after physical exercise showed a reduction of perfusion in the whole lung due to a transitory massive shift of blood mass from visceral to muscular districts.
Conclusions: The extremely short acquisition and post-processing time coupled with a simple feasibility, the ability to detect physiological perfusional changes, the minimal invasivity indicate a potential clinical use of MR in the pulmonary perfusion defects evaluation.