Healthy Lung Study- Development of 3T MRI Hardware and Software for 3He Gas Imaging of the Lung: Healthy Volunteer Development Study

Hyperpolarized noble gas imaging using Helium-3 has been used to explore structural and functional relationships in the lung in patients with lung disease and healthy controls. In contrast to proton-based MRI imaging, 3He gas is used as a contrast agent to directly visualize the airways, and thus ventilation. Whereas the normal density of gas is too low to produce an easily detectable signal, this is overcome by artificially increasing the amount of polarization per unit volume using optical pumping.