3T MRI

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案是为科罗拉多大学医学院安舒茨医学院申请3特斯拉全身宽口径磁共振成像系统。拟议中的仪器（3 T西门子Skyra）将满足未满足的研究需求，同时为各部门和机构的研究人员提供更多的科学和资金机会。 加州大学医学院的一个主要研究兴趣是了解和开发更好的治疗精神分裂症和相关精神疾病的方法。由于这些研究中有许多涉及听觉感官处理，研究受到我们目前扫描仪产生的巨大噪音的限制。所要求的3 T Siemens扫描仪明显比我们目前的GE 3 T MRI扫描仪更安静，大大提高了我们在该领域的研究能力。除了有利于我们的成人感觉处理和药物开发研究外，更安静的扫描也将大大有利于一项新资助的大型努力，以了解婴儿感觉处理和认知能力的发展。我们目前扫描婴儿的成功率约为50%。扫描成功的主要障碍是我们目前的扫描仪的噪音，它经常吵醒熟睡的婴儿。除了更安静之外，新扫描仪上的并行成像和更高的加速因子还可以缩短总体检查时间，从而增加该人群完成扫描的可能性。这些因素也会导致海马体和前额叶皮层的几何失真和信号丢失减少，这些大脑区域被认为是精神疾病发展的关键。 另一个将受益于新系统的主要研究重点是我们努力了解饮食失调，肥胖和糖尿病的生理和神经生物学基础。这些研究的一个重要局限性是我们目前的MR系统孔径狭窄。这一限制排除了超过30%的肥胖受试者的扫描。这种尺寸限制也是肝脏光谱研究中的关键因素，特别是对于那些涉及测量31 P和13 C的研究，这些研究需要表面线圈。在我们目前的系统中，由于表面线圈所需的空间，仅可用于研究瘦受试者。大口径系统将使肝脏的多核研究能够获得线粒体代谢和肝糖原，这对糖尿病和肥胖研究都很重要。 拟议的新系统还将大大改善MRI相关研究的重要方面，使所有用户受益，包括1）更高的信噪比，2）获得更新的成像技术（例如，动脉自旋标记），3）更小的磁体尺寸，这可以增加患者的舒适度，以及4）消除了我们当前对可以采集的切片/体积数量的限制。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is a request for a 3 Tesla, whole-body, wide-bore magnetic resonance imaging system for the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus. The proposed instrument (3T Siemens MAGNETOM Skyra) would fulfill unmet research needs while providing greater scientific and funding opportunities for investigators across a wide range of departments and institutions. A major research interest at the UC School of Medicine is understanding and developing better treatments for schizophrenia and related mental illnesses. Because many of these studies involve auditory sensory processing, research is limited by the loud noise generated by our current scanner. The requested 3T Siemens scanner is markedly quieter than our current dated GE 3T MRI scanner, substantially improving our research capabilities in this area. In addition to benefiting our adult sensory processing and drug development studies, quieter scanning also would also greatly benefit a large newly- funded effort to understand the development of sensory processing and cognitive abilities in infants. Our current success rate for scanning infants is approximately 50%. The primary hindrance to scanning success is the noise of our current scanner, which often wakes the sleeping infants. In addition to being substantially quieter, parallel imaging and higher acceleration factors on the new scanner would allow for a shorter overall exam time, additionally increasing the likelihood of scan completion in this population. These factors would also result in less geometric distortion and signal dropout in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, brain areas thought to be critically important in the development of mental illness. Another major research focus that would benefit from the new system is our effort to understand the physiological and neurobiological basis of eating disorders, obesity and diabetes. A significant limitation for these studies is the narrow bore diameter of our current MR system. This limitation precludes scanning over 30% of obese subjects. This size limitation also is a key factor in spectroscopic studies of the liver, particulrly for those involving the measurement of 31P and 13C, which require a surface coil. In our present system, it is only feasible to study lean subjects, due to space required for the surface coil. A wide-bore system would enable multinuclear studies of the liver to access mitochondrial metabolism and liver glycogen, both important for diabetes and obesity studies. The proposed new system would also substantially improve important aspects of MRI-related research that would benefit all users, including 1) higher signal-to-noise ratios, 2) access to newer imaging techniques (e.g., arterial spin-labeling) not available on our current platform, 3) smaller magnet size, which can increase patient comfort and 4) elimination of our current limitation on the number of slices/volumes that can be acquired.