Reproducibility of non-invasive 3D imaging of glucose downstream metabolism using deuterium labeling: indirect 1H QELT at 3T vs direct 2H DMI at 7T

Deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) and quantitative exchange label turnover (QELT) are emerging MR techniques to non-invasively map brain glucose uptake and downstream metabolism using safe and affordable deuterium labeled glucose as tracer. This work compares dynamically detected deuterium labeled Glutamate+Glutamine time courses between three-dimensional 3T-1H QELT-MRSI and 7T-2H-DMI using quantification of concentration estimates. Comparable enrichment of deuterated Glx could be observed in gray matter (1.59±0.24mM vs. 1.39±0.17mM) while differences were found in WM (0.89±0.32 mM vs. 1.31±0.2 mM) presumably due to partial volume contamination. Results showed a successful translation of QELT to clinical 3T.