Functional lung MRI for regional monitoring of patients with cystic fibrosis

Till F Kaireit; Sajoscha A Sorrentino; Julius Renne; Christian Schoenfeld; Andreas Voskrebenzev; Marcel Gutberlet; Angela Schulz; Peter M Jakob; Gesine Hansen; Frank Wacker; Tobias Welte; Burkhard Tümmler; Jens Vogel-Claussen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0187483

Functional lung MRI for regional monitoring of patients with cystic fibrosis

PLoS One. 2017 Dec 7;12(12):e0187483. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187483. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Till F Kaireit^{1

2}, Sajoscha A Sorrentino¹, Julius Renne^{1

2}, Christian Schoenfeld^{1

2}, Andreas Voskrebenzev^{1

2}, Marcel Gutberlet^{1

2}, Angela Schulz³, Peter M Jakob⁴, Gesine Hansen^{2

3}, Frank Wacker^{1

2}, Tobias Welte^{2

5}, Burkhard Tümmler^{2

3}, Jens Vogel-Claussen^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
² Biomedical Research in Endstage and Obstructive Lung Disease (BREATH), German Center for Lung Research, Hannover, Germany.
³ Department of Pediatric Pulmonology, Allergology and Neonatology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
⁴ Department of Experimental Physics 5, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
⁵ Department of Respiratory Medicine, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.

Abstract

Purpose: To test quantitative functional lung MRI techniques in young adults with cystic fibrosis (CF) compared to healthy volunteers and to monitor immediate treatment effects of a single inhalation of hypertonic saline in comparison to clinical routine pulmonary function tests.

Materials and methods: Sixteen clinically stable CF patients and 12 healthy volunteers prospectively underwent two functional lung MRI scans and pulmonary function tests before and 2h after a single treatment of inhaled hypertonic saline or without any treatment. MRI-derived oxygen enhanced T1 relaxation measurements, fractional ventilation, first-pass perfusion parameters and a morpho-functional CF-MRI score were acquired.

Results: Compared to healthy controls functional lung MRI detected and quantified significantly increased ventilation heterogeneity in CF patients. Regional functional lung MRI measures of ventilation and perfusion as well as the CF-MRI score and pulmonary function tests could not detect a significant treatment effect two hours after a single treatment with hypertonic saline in young adults with CF (p>0.05).

Conclusion: This study shows the feasibility of functional lung MRI as a non-invasive, radiation-free tool for monitoring patients with CF.

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Case-Control Studies
Child
Cystic Fibrosis / diagnostic imaging*
Female
Healthy Volunteers
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods*
Male
Monitoring, Physiologic / methods*
Prospective Studies
Sodium Chloride / administration & dosage
Young Adult

Substances

Sodium Chloride

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Ernst-August-Schrader and the BMBF, German Center for Lung Research, Disease Area CF. The funding sources had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.