Promotionsvortrag Physik: „Comprehensive Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer Magnetic Resonance Imaging at 7T“

Ankündigung des Promotionsvortrags von: Herrn Moritz Fabian

Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) is a MR imaging method providing molecular image contrasts based on indirect detection of low concentrated solutes. Previous CEST studies focus predominantly on the imaging of single CEST exchange regimes, e.g. slow, intermediate or fast exchanging groups.

Results of previous publications and own simulations in pulseq-CEST were used to come up with a 7T CEST protocol, that has sensitivity to three B1 regimes. With post-processing optimi-zation (WASABI B0-fitting, MIMOSA B1 correction), neural network employment (deepCEST) and analytic input feature reduction, the initial 40 minutes protocol was shortened to 15 minutes. It generates 6 CEST contrast maps simultaneously. With this protocol, healthy subjects as well as patients with cerebral diseases were measured after written informed consent and approval of the local ethics comittee. Data of different high-grade tumor patients showed CEST signal changes beyond areas, where clinical imaging would outline the tumor area.

Comprehensive 7T CEST paves the way for comprehensive CEST studies in clinical scan times for hypothesis generation regarding molecular properties of certain pathologies, e.g. ischemic stroke, relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis or high-grade brain tumors.

(Vortrag auf Englisch)

Dem Vortrag schließt sich eine Diskussion von 15 Minuten an. Vortrag und Diskussion sind öffentlich. Diesen Verfahrensteilen folgt ein nicht öffentliches Rigorosum von 45 Minuten.