Erika Mariotti1,
Fiona Shaughnessy1, Rodolfo A. Medina1, Joel T. Dunn1,
Richard Southworth1, Thomas R. Eykyn1, 2
1Division
of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London,
London, United Kingdom; 2CRUK and EPSRC Cancer Imaging Centre, Royal
Marsden NHS Trust, The Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, Surrey, United
Kingdom
To obtain information on the underlying metabolic activities, hyperpolarized data are usually fit using kinetic models to derive rates. In this work, we show the feasibility of analysing hyperpolarized data without prior assumptions of a model and, at the same time, overcoming the multiple local minimum problem by applying a hybrid Maximum-Entropy/NonLinear-Least-Squares (MEM/NLS) method4 to hyperpolarized 13C data both in vitro in whole blood and ex vivo in the isolated rat heart.