Determinants of tissue delivery for Xe-129 magnetic resonance in humans

Magnetic resonance imaging using laser-polarized Xe-129 is a new technique first demonstrated by Albert et al, (Nature 370, 1994) who obtained a Xe-129 image of an excised mouse lung, This paper describes the factors influencing the accumulation of inhaled, polarized Xe-129 in human tissue, The resulting model predicts the Xe-129 magnetization in different tissues as a function of the time from the start of inhalation, the tissue perfusion rate and partition coefficient for xenon, and the relevant T-1 decay times, The relaxation times of Xe-129 in biological tissues are not yet known precisely, Substitution of estimated values for these parameters results in an expected signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) from polarized Xe-129 MR in the brain of approximately 2% of the equivalent SNR from proton MR.