Whole-cerebrum guanidino and amide CEST mapping at 3 T by a 3D stack-of-spirals gradient echo acquisition.

PURPOSE: To develop a 3D, high-sensitivity CEST mapping technique based on the 3D stack-of-spirals (SOS) gradient echo readout, the proposed approach was compared with conventional acquisition techniques and evaluated for its efficacy in concurrently mapping of guanidino (Guan) and amide CEST in human brain at 3 T, leveraging the polynomial Lorentzian line-shape fitting (PLOF) method. METHODS: Saturation time and recovery delay were optimized to achieve maximum CEST time efficiency. The 3DSOS method was compared with segmented 3D EPI (3DEPI), turbo spin echo, and gradient- and spin-echo techniques. Image quality, temporal SNR (tSNR), and test-retest reliability were assessed. Maps of Guan and amide CEST derived from 3DSOS were demonstrated on a low-grade glioma patient. RESULTS: The optimized recovery delay/saturation time was determined to be 1.4/2 s for Guan and amide CEST. In addition to nearly doubling the slice number, the gradient echo techniques also outperformed spin echo sequences in tSNR: 3DEPI (193.8 ± 6.6), 3DSOS (173.9 ± 5.6), and GRASE (141.0 ± 2.7). 3DSOS, compared with 3DEPI, demonstrated comparable GuanCEST signal in gray matter (GM) (3DSOS: [2.14%-2.59%] vs. 3DEPI: [2.15%-2.61%]), and white matter (WM) (3DSOS: [1.49%-2.11%] vs. 3DEPI: [1.64%-2.09%]). 3DSOS also achieves significantly higher amideCEST in both GM (3DSOS: [2.29%-3.00%] vs. 3DEPI: [2.06%-2.92%]) and WM (3DSOS: [2.23%-2.66%] vs. 3DEPI: [1.95%-2.57%]). 3DSOS outperforms 3DEPI in terms of scan-rescan reliability (correlation coefficient: 3DSOS: 0.58-0.96 vs. 3DEPI: -0.02 to 0.75) and robustness to motion as well. CONCLUSION: The 3DSOS CEST technique shows promise for whole-cerebrum CEST imaging, offering uniform contrast and robustness against motion artifacts.

Age-dependent cerebrospinal fluid-tissue water exchange detected by magnetization transfer indirect spin labeling MRI.

PURPOSE: A non-invasive magnetization transfer indirect spin labeling (MISL) MRI method is developed to quantify the water exchange between cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and other tissues in the brain and to examine the age-dependence of water exchange. METHOD: In the pulsed MISL, we implemented a short selective pulse followed by a post-labeling delay before an MRI acquisition with a long echo time; in the continuous MISL, a train of saturation pulses was applied. MISL signal (∆Z) was obtained by the subtraction of the label MRI at -3.5 ppm from the control MRI at 200 ppm. CSF was extracted from the mouse ventricles for the MISL optimization and validation. Comparison between wild type (WT) and aquaporin-4 knockout (AQP4-/- ) mice was performed to examine the contributions of CSF water exchange, whereas its age-dependence was investigated by comparing the adult and young WT mice. RESULTS: The pulsed MISL method observed that the MISL signal reached the maximum at 1.5 s. The continuous MISL method showed the highest MISL signal in the fourth ventricle (∆Z = 13.5% ± 1.4%), whereas the third ventricle and the lateral ventricles had similar MISL ∆Z values (∆Z = 12.0% ± 1.8%). Additionally, significantly lower ∆Z (9.3%-18.7% reduction) was found in all ventricles for the adult mice than those of the young mice (p < 0.02). For the AQP4-/- mice, the ∆Z values were 5.9%-8.3% smaller than those of the age-matched WT mice in the lateral and fourth ventricles, but were not significant. CONCLUSION: The MISL method has a great potential to study CSF water exchange with the surrounding tissues in brain.

Cerebrospinal fluid-tissue exchange revealed by phase alternate labeling with null recovery MRI.

PURPOSE: To develop phase alternate labeling with null recovery (PALAN) MRI methods for the quantification of the water exchange between cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and other surrounding tissues in the brain. METHOD: In both T1 -PALAN and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)-PALAN MRI methods, the cerebrospinal fluid signal was nulled, whereas the partial recovery of other tissues with shorter T1 (T1 -PALAN) or lower ADC values (ADC-PALAN) was labeled by alternating the phase of pulses. The water exchange was extracted from the difference between the recovery curves of CSF with and without labeling. RESULTS: Both T1 -PALAN and ADC-PALAN observed a rapid occurrence of CSF water exchange with the surrounding tissues at 67 ± 56 ms and 13 ± 2 ms transit times, respectively. The T1 and ADC-PALAN signal peaked at 1.5 s. The CSF water exchange was 1153 ± 270 mL/100 mL/min with T1 -PALAN in the third and lateral ventricles, which was higher than 891 ± 60 mL/100 mL/min obtained by ADC-PALAN. T1 -PALAN ∆S values for the rostral and caudal ventricles are 0.015 ± 0.013 and 0.034 ± 0.01 (p = 0.022, n = 5), whereas similar ΔS values in both rostral and caudal lateral ventricles were observed by ADC-PALAN (3.9 ± 1.9 × 10-3 vs 4.4 ± 1.4 × 10-3 ; p = 0.66 and n = 5). CONCLUSION: The PALAN methods are suitable tools to study CSF water exchange across different compartments in the brain.

Experimental and Theoretical Studies on the Implications of Halide-Dependent Aqueous Solvation of Sm(II).

The addition of water to samarium(II) has been demonstrated to have a significant impact on the reduction of organic substrates, with the majority of research dedicated to the most widely used reagent, samarium diiodide (SmI2). The work presented herein focuses on the reducing capabilities of samarium dibromide (SmBr2) and demonstrates how the modest change in halide ligand results in observable mechanistic differences between the SmBr2-water and the SmI2-water systems that have considerable implications in terms of reactivity between the two reagents. Quantum chemical results from Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics simulations show significant differences between SmI2-water and SmBr2-water, with the latter displaying less dissociation of the halide, which results in a lower coordination number for water. Experimental results are consistent with computational results and demonstrate that the coordination sphere of SmBr2 is saturated at lower concentrations of water. In addition, coordination-induced bond-weakening of the O-H bond is demonstrably different for water bound to SmBr2, leading to an estimated O-H bond-weakening of at least 83 kcal/mol, nearly 10 kcal/mol larger than the bond-weakening observed in SmI2-H2O. Experimental results also demonstrate that the use of alcohols in place of water with SmBr2 leads to substrate reduction, albeit several orders of magnitude slower than for SmBr2-water. The difference in rates resulting from the change in proton donor is attributed to a rate-limiting proton-coupled electron transfer in SmBr2-water and a sequential electron transfer then proton transfer in SmBr2-alcohol systems, where electron transfer is rate-limiting.

Secondary Amides as Hydrogen Atom Transfer Promoters for Reactions of Samarium Diiodide.

Two secondary amides (N-methylacetamide and 2-pyrrolidinone) were used as additives with SmI2 in THF to estimate the extent of N-H bond weakening upon coordination. Mechanistic and synthetic studies demonstrate significant bond-weakening, providing a reagent system capable of reducing a range of substrates through formal hydrogen atom transfer.