Elsevier, Journal of Magnetic Resonance, (247), p. 88-95, 2014
DOI: 10.1016/j.jmr.2014.08.017
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Functional changes of sodium 3D MRI signals were converted into millimolar concentration changes using an open-source fully automated MATLAB toolbox. These concentration changes are visualized via 3D sodium concentration maps, and they are overlaid over conventional 3D proton images to provide high-resolution co-registration for easy correlation of functional changes to anatomical regions. Nearly 5000/hour concentration maps were generated on a personal computer (ca. 2012) using 21.1 T 3D sodium MRI brain images of live rats with spatial resolution of 0.8×0.8×0.8 mm3 and imaging matrices of 60×60×60. The produced concentration maps allowed for non-invasive quantitative measurement of in vivo sodium concentration in the normal rat brain as a functional response to migraine-like conditions. The presented work can also be applied to sodium-associated changes in migraine, cancer, and other metabolic abnormalities that can be sensed by molecular imaging.