MRI for Non-Invasive Imaging in Neonates and Children

Healthy Clinical Trial

Official title: MRI as a Means to Measure Lung Function: Non-Invasive Imaging in Neonates and Young Children

Status Completed

Clinical Trial Summary

The purpose of this study is to develop rapid MRI techniques for imaging the lung with hyperpolarized helium-3 gas as an inhaled contrast agent. These techniques will be piloted in adults and older children before testing them in younger children and infants. The purpose is to enable imaging of non-sedated infants by imaging so fast as to freeze motion.

Clinical Trial Description

he purpose of this study is to further develop the techniques to permit the imaging of infant lungs with hyperpolarized helium-3 MRI including techniques for acquisition in free breathing infants and infants on a ventilator. We have developed fast imaging techniques and obtained proof-of-concept data in infants as young as 2 months old. Many pediatric lung diseases including CF, bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and asthma have their origins in infancy so it would be desirable to be able to image infants with hyperpolarized gas MRI. We focused on developing fast imaging techniques to, in essence, freeze lung motion in non-sedated infants. We feel the technique will be more widely adopted if clinically useful images can be obtained without sedating the infant. Some very rapid imaging techniques have been developed for conventional proton MRI for applications such as cardiac MRI that require very short acquisition time. We modified these techniques for use in hyperpolarized gas MRI and developed a technique that permits the acquisition of the entire lung volume of an infant in less than 1 second. These techniques would also be useful for imaging infants who are still on a ventilator with the hope of increasing our understanding of lung development and neonatal lung disease. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Asthma
• Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia
• Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia (BPD)
• Cystic Fibrosis
• Cystic Fibrosis (CF)
• Healthy

• NCT number: NCT02163681
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: University of Virginia
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: January 1, 2011
• Completion date: July 30, 2018