The presented MR approach reliably identifies patients with coronary artery stenoses and provides information on the amount of compromised myocardium, even when perfusion abnormalities are confined to the subendocardial layer. This modality may qualify for its clinical application in the management of coronary artery disease.

The search for novel image contrasts has been a major driving force in the magnetic resonance (MR) research community, in order to gain further information on the body’s physiological and pathological conditions.Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) is a novel MR technique that enables imaging certain compounds at concentrations that are too low to impact the contrast of standard MR imaging and too low to directly be detected in MRS at typical water imaging resolution. For this to be possible, the target compound must be capable of exchanging protons with the surrounding water molecules. This property can be exploited to cause a continuous buildup of magnetic saturation of water, leading to greatly enhanced sensitivity.The goal of the present review is to introduce the basic principles of CEST imaging to the general molecular imaging community. Special focus has been given to the comparison of state-of-the-art CEST methods reported in the literature with their positron emission tomography (PET) counterparts.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Normative age-related decline in paravertebral muscle quality is important for reference to disease and risk identification in patients. We aimed to establish age-and vertebral level-dependence of paravertebral (multifidus and erector spinae) muscle volume and fat content in healthy adult volunteers.

With increasing doses of CM, a higher signal response in the myocardium was achieved and consequently this stress-only protocol, with CM doses of 0.10-0.15 mmol/kg combined with a semi-automatic analysis, yielded a high diagnostic performance for the detection of CAD.