Sodium imaging with soft inversion recovery fluid attenuation, which may be advantageous for intracellular weighting, was demonstrated with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) suppression in five healthy volunteers at 4.7 T. Long rectangular inversion pulses reduce the average power deposition in an inversion recovery sequence, allowing repetition time to be shortened and more averages acquired for a given scan length. Longer pulses also significantly reduce the "depth" of M z inversion in environments with rapid T 1 and T 2 relaxation (i.e., brain relative to CSF). Phantom experiments and simulation show a marked SNR increase when using a 10-ms, rather than a 1-ms, rectangular inversion pulse. Images were acquired in 11.1 min with a voxel size of 0.25 cm 3 and the SNR in CSF, which is typically ϳ3 times larger than in brain, was reduced to 23% of that in the brain tissue, which had an average SNR of 17. Magn Reson Med 54: 1305-1310, 2005.

Sodium MRI is particularly interesting given the key role that sodium ions play in cellular metabolism. To measure concentration, images must be free from contrast unrelated to sodium density. However, spin 3/2 NMR is complicated by more than rapid biexponential signal decay. Residual quadrupole interactions (described by frequency ωQ) can reduce Mxy development during RF excitation. Three experiments, each performed on the same four healthy volunteers, demonstrate that residual quadrupole interactions are of concern in quantitative sodium imaging of the brain. The first experiment shows a reliable increase in the rate of excitation 'flipping' (1%-6%), particularly in white matter with tracts running superior-inferior (i.e. parallel to B0). Increased flip-rates imply an associated signal loss and are to be expected when ωQ ~ ω1. The second experiment shows that a prescribed flip-angle decrease from 90° to 20°, with concomitant decrease in TE from 0.25 ms to 0.10 ms and no T1 weighting, results in a 14%-26% saline calibration phantom normalized signal (SN) increase in the white matter regions. The third experiment shows that this (SN) increase is primarily due to a residual quadrupole effect, with a small contribution from T2 weighting. There is an observed deviation from the spin 3/2 biexponential curve, also suggesting ωQ dephasing. Using simulation to explain the results of all three experiments, a model of brain tissue is hypothesized. It includes one pool (50%) with ωQ = 0, and another (50%) in which ωQ has a Gaussian distribution with a standard deviation of 625 Hz. Given the result of the second experiment, it is suggested that the use of reduced flip-angles with large ω1 will provide more accurate measures of sodium concentration than 'standard' methods using 90° pulses. Alternatively, further study of sodium ωQmay provide a means to explore tissue structure and organization.

Increases of sodium signal intensity within the ischemic lesion are related to time after stroke onset. Thus, noninvasive imaging of sodium may be a novel metabolic biomarker related to stroke progression. Ann Neurol 2009;66:55-62.

For sodium imaging of the human brain, Gibbs' ringing can degrade image appearance and confound image analysis; k-space filtering is generally required. In this work, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) advantage of sampling density weighted apodization (SDWA) over uniform k-space sampling with postacquisition filtering apodization (UPFA) is quantified for sodium three-dimensional (3D) twisted projection imaging (TPI) of the human brain. A direct comparison was conducted with the creation of two TPI projection data sets (each with an equal number of projections of equal length): one generating uniform sampling density, and the other a "generalized Hamming" sampling density that conformed to 3D-TPI constraints for full k-space sampling. In this work it is shown theoretically, and then experimentally with sodium imaging of the human brain, that an SNR advantage of 17% is associated with the use of SDWA over UPFA for the filter presented, along with a significant noise-coloring benefit.

Purpose: To assess the relationship between sodium signal intensity changes and oligemia, measured with perfusion-weighted imaging (PWI), in ischemic stroke patients. Materials and Methods:Nine ischemic stroke patients (55 6 13 years), four with follow-up scans, underwent sodium and proton imaging 4-32 hours after symptom onset. Relative sodium intensity was calculated as the ratio of signal intensities in core (identified as hypertintense lesions on diffusion-weighted imaging [DWI]) or putative penumbra (PWI-DWI mismatch) to contralateral homologous regions.Results: Sodium intensity increases in the core were not correlated with the severity of hypoperfusion, measured with either cerebral blood flow (rho ¼ 0.157; P ¼ 0.61) or cerebral blood volume (rho ¼ À0.234; P ¼ 0.44). In contrast, relative sodium intensity was not elevated (4-7 hours 0.96 6 0.07; 17-32 hours 1.00 6 0.07) in PWI-DWI mismatch regions.Conclusion: Sodium signal intensity cannot be predicted by the degree of hypoperfusion acutely. Sodium intensity also remains unchanged in PWI-DWI mismatch tissue, indicating preservation of ionic homeostasis. Sodium magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in conjunction with PWI and DWI, may permit identification of patients with viable tissue, despite an unknown symptom onset time.