The application of 19F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has gained popularity in recent years in molecular imaging and drug metabolism studies [1]. 19F chemical shift imaging (CSI), generally called 19F spectroscopic imaging (SI), has been used to study the uptake and metabolism of anaesthesia inside the human body [2, 3]. Although SI can provide superior information on metabolites and uptake kinetics of anaesthetic agents, it has a downside in that it generally requires long total acquisition times. The aim of this study is to develop fast imaging MRI methods based on Rapid Acquisition with Relaxation Enhancement (RARE) [4] to obtain 19F spectroscopic images of isoflurane in phantom samples.
A fast 19F SI pulse sequence based on the Spectroscopic RARE sequence [4] was applied to obtain isoflurane images and spectra on an 11.7 T spectrometer with a bore size of 89 mm. The newly developed method showed strong potential as decent 19F images were quickly obtained. The total acquisition time in the new RARE SI method was about four times shorter compared to that in conventional spin-echo-based SI sequences.