Hyperpolarized 129Xe MRI for Lung Diseases

Lung diseases are illnesses that cause loss of normal lung function and can affect the patient's daily life, health care professionals' work performance and death rate. The number of lung diseases in children has been increasing, mainly due to higher cigarette smoking rates. The diagnosis and treatment of lung diseases still face numerous problems.

No cure for lung diseases exists, although many advances have been made in the understanding of the disease processes over the past few decades. Many trials have focused on treatment of advanced or incurable lung diseases. Because all lung diseases have devastating consequences, there remains a need for better understanding of disease mechanisms and potential treatments for lung diseases.

Some of the risk factors for lung diseases include exposure to pesticides, smoking, occupational exposure, and environmental exposures like air pollution. Lung diseases also develop when specific immune cells and/or cells in the airway are triggered or are unable to perform appropriate functions.

Approximately 60,200 people die from lung diseases and 1.5 million are hospitalized for lung disease each year in the United States. Mortality and hospitalization from lung diseases could be reduced by 20%.

Diagnosis of lung conditions (including [diseases that affect how people breathe, like lung cancer, emphysema, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)] are [important because these conditions often lead to permanent morbidity and sometimes even to death] in adults involves various methods (such as physical examination, spirometry, X-rays etc.) that often use quantitative measurements of air leak and gas exchange in the lungs.

Findings from a recent study has highlighted the need for adequate lung disease treatments which are generally targeted at specific disease stages. Effective lung patient education regarding diagnosis, prevention and progression and the use of lung disease medications need to be emphasized to improve the health status of patients. Additionally, as lung disease treatments become more effective, patients will require less frequent visits by their healthcare providers, fewer visits from external health care providers and fewer lung disease medications to manage lung diseases.

Combinations of hyperpolarized mri with any other treatments may lead to increased specificity and decreased sensitivity, which may in turn reduce the accuracy of distinguishing lung tuberculosis from other disease states.

Hyperpolarized magnetic resonance imaging using P-mRI was found to be more effective than a placebo for all 4 MR techniques which demonstrated increased lesion contrast, improved conspicuity of vascular enhancement images, and increased overall image quality.

The main aim of research in this field nowadays is to understand the cellular mechanisms behind inflammatory and fibrotic lung diseases, in a bid to identify novel therapeutic targets for these pathologies. Lung cancer is an incurable disease and is the main cause of death worldwide. The mechanisms that cause lung cancer have long been unknown and new understanding of the lung immunology is needed to facilitate research that would lead to new treatments for lung cancer. Lung diseases have a global burden; research in lung immunology could have a big impact on the understanding of lung immunopathology and treatment strategies against lung diseases would change in future.

Several lung diseases are common and a number of fatal diseases are lethal. The major cause of lung diseases is smoking, which is associated with lung cancer, COPD, bronchiectasis and asthma and chronic lung disease. Lung diseases which can be life threatening are [Pneumoconiosis], [Argentinian hemorrhagic fever] and [Pleurisy] although there are many other ones. In a global perspective, lung diseases are an important public health problem because they cause premature death and disability. Patients with lung diseases benefit from supportive medical therapies which are crucial in enhancing quality of life, enabling patients to continue with activities of daily living and maintain and restore functional capacities.

The causes of lung diseases may be divided into chronic inflammatory, fibrotic, autoimmune, external factors, and unknown causes. Lung diseases appear to have a complex mechanism, requiring multiple factors for disease development. The major part of chronic inflammatory lung diseases is due to non-infectious and -allergic diseases, which cause chronic immune activation that drives the remodeling and fibrosis of the lung.