3T MRI

描述(由申请人提供)：这份建议书是为科罗拉多大学医学院安舒茨医学院申请的3特斯拉，全身，大口径磁共振成像系统。拟议的仪器(3T西门子Magnetom Skyra)将满足尚未满足的研究需求，同时为广泛部门和机构的调查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精神分裂症和相关精神疾病的治疗方法。由于这些研究中的许多涉及听觉感觉处理，研究受到目前扫描仪产生的巨大噪音的限制。所要求的西门子3T扫描仪明显比我们目前陈旧的GE 3T MRI扫描仪安静，大大提高了我们在这一领域的研究能力。除了有利于我们的成人感觉处理和药物开发研究，更安静的扫描也将极大地受益于一项新资助的大型研究，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系数将允许更短的总体检查时间，此外还增加了这一人群完成扫描的可能性。这些因素还将减少海马体和前额叶皮质的几何失真和信号丢失，这两个大脑区域被认为在精神疾病的发展中至关重要。另一个将从新系统中受益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限制是我们目前的MR系统的内径很窄。这一限制排除了超过30%的肥胖受试者的扫描。这一尺寸限制也是肝脏光谱学研究中的一个关键因素，特别是那些涉及测量31P和13C的光谱分析，这需要表面线圈。在我们目前的系统中，由于表面线圈所需的空间，研究瘦对象是可行的。一个大口径的系统将使肝脏的多核研究能够访问线粒体代谢和肝糖原，这两个方面对糖尿病和肥胖症的研究都很重要。拟议的新系统还将极大地改善磁共振成像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)获得目前平台上无法使用的新成像技术(例如动脉自旋标记)，3)更小的磁铁尺寸，这可以提高患者的舒适度，4)消除我们目前可以获得的切片/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.