Imaging of a mixture of hyperpolarized 3He and 129Xe

With the use of hyperpolarized gases, a great number of experiments have been carried out in order to improve the diagnostics of the lung, both from a structural and a functional point of view. 3He is best suited for structural studies, whereas 129Xe gives more detailed information about the functionality of the lung because it enters the bloodstream. In this work, we propose the use of a gas mixture to perform consecutive analysis of lung structure and functionality upon the delivery of a single bolus of gas. We show images of a helium–xenon gas mixture in the presence of a small amount of liquid toluene in order to demonstrate how both nuclei can be detected independently, extracting the spectroscopic information provided by the 129Xe spectra and obtaining an image with high sensitivity for 3He. A second experiment performed on a dissected mouse lung was used to demonstrate how the mixture of gases can enhance sensitivity in the larger airways of the lung.