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Abstract

Recently we demonstrated that a selective detection of endogenous bulk mobile proteins in living tissue can be realized by the novel approach of dual-frequency irradiation CEST (dualCEST)-MRI1
without contamination of saturation transfer effects of metabolites, lipids and
semi-solids. For this approach, specificity is achieved by measuring the intramolecular magnetization transfer (i.e. saturation crosstalk T) between CEST signals resonating at two different frequency offsets Δω and Δωc (Fig. 1a). Such a non-invasive imaging technique may be of particular interest for the detection of pathological alterations of protein expression, such as in
neurodegenerative diseases or cancer. Until now, application in clinical trials
was prevented by the inherently small signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in
comparison to conventional CEST approaches. Here, we present further
developments in signal preparation, image acquisition and post-processing techniques enabling dualCEST examinations in a reasonable and clinicallyrelevant time frame.