Bilateral 23Na MR imaging of the breast and quantification of sodium concentration

Abstract

A novel setup for 23 Na MRI, which allows bilateral imaging of the breast, is presented. For this purpose a figure- eight receive-only 23 Na surface coil was developed. For our experiments on three samples with NaCl solutions of different sodium concentrations and two female subjects we used an asymmetric birdcage coil in transmit mode and the developed surface coil for receiving the signal at 3 T. Imaging of the samples showed the applicabil- ity of the employed normalization method for measuring the distribution of sodium concentration. In a sample of concentration [Na + ] = 51 mM we achieved SNR = 70 at a nominal isotropic resolution of 2,5 mm (T R =66 ms, TE =0,6 ms, TA = 20 min). Furthermore we showed that by means of this setup it is possible to quantify the sodium concentration in breast tissue (TSC) of a female subject with an accuracy of 23% (T R =150 ms, T E =0,5 ms, T A =45 min).