Measurement of individual organ tissue oxygen levels can provide information to help evaluate and optimize medical interventions in many areas including wound healing, resuscitation strategies, and cancer therapeutics. Echo planar 19F MRI has previously focused on tumor oxygen measurement at low oxygen levels (pO2) < 30 mmHg. It uses the linear relationship between spin-lattice relaxation rate (R1) of hexafluorobenzene (HFB) and pO2. The feasibility of this technique for a wider range of pO2 values and individual organ tissue pO2 measurement was investigated in a rat model. Spin-lattice relaxation times (T1=1/R1) of HFB were measured using 19F saturation recovery echo planar imaging (EPI). Initial in vitro studies validated the linear relationship between R1 and pO2 from 0 mmHg to 760 mmHg oxygen partial pressure at 25°C, 37°C, and 41°C at 7 Tesla for HFB. In vivo experiments measured rat tissue oxygen (ptO2) levels of brain, kidney, liver, gut, muscle and skin during inhalation of both 30% and 100% oxygen. All organ ptO2 values significantly increased with hyperoxia (p<0.001). This study demonstrates that 19F MRI of HFB offers a feasible tool to measure regional ptO2 in vivo, and that hyperoxia significantly increases ptO2 of multiple organs in a rat model.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.