Development of Cerebral Blood Flow and Cerebral Blood Volume Quantification Procedures using MRI without Contrast Agents

现代医学成像方法已经改变了许多疾病的诊断和治疗。迄今为止，大多数成像技术仅用于显示疾病在大脑等器官中的位置，帮助医生诊断癌症或中风。最近已经开发了一些技术，能够提供关于大脑的额外信息，例如组织供血量，或大脑不同部位血管的密度。除了在医院有用外，这些技术也被制药公司用来提供更好的信息，说明他们的新药是否有效。然而，许多这些较新的成像技术涉及侵入性程序，如注射，或涉及将患者暴露于电离辐射。我们希望开发新的完全无创的技术，使用磁共振成像（MRI），这将能够准确和绝对地测量大脑中的血流和血管密度。在验证这些测量与更成熟的侵入性技术的准确性之后，我们将使用它们来确定它们在检测将药物引入体内引起的变化方面的有用程度。我们还将使用新技术来评估它们在为大脑供血的动脉部分阻塞的患者中检测异常模式的能力。如果成功的话，这些技术可以在更快地开发治疗疾病的新药以及诊断和治疗许多脑部疾病方面得到更广泛的应用。

Modern medical imaging methods have transformed the diagnosis and treatment of a number of diseases. To date, most imaging has been used to show only the location of disease in organs such as the brain, helping doctors make diagnoses that include cancer or stroke. Recently a number of techniques have been developed that are able to provide additional information on the brain, such as the amount of blood supplying the tissue, or the density of blood vessels in different parts of the brain. As well as being useful in hospitals, these techniques are also being used by drug companies to provide better information on whether their new drugs are working well. However, many of these newer imaging techniques involve invasive procedures, such as injections, or involve exposing the patient to ionizing radiation. We wish to develop new totally non-invasive techniques using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that will be able to make accurate and absolute measurements of blood flow and vessel density in the brain. After verifying the accuracy of these measurements against more established invasive techniques, we will then use them to determine how useful they are in detecting changes caused by introducing a drug into the body. We will also use the new techniques to assess their ability to detect abnormal patterns in patients whose arteries that feed their brain have become partially blocked. If successful, these techniques could then find wider application in the more rapid development of new drugs to treat disease, and in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of brain diseases.