Free-breathing quantitative blood oxygen level-dependent (qBOLD) MRI of the healthy adult pancreas during oral glucose stimulation

Motivation: Current clinical standards for diagnosing diabetes are indirect and mostly sensitive to late disease stages. For early detection and intervention, a marker is needed to directly observe declines in beta-cell function. Goal(s): Quantitative blood oxygen level-dependent (qBOLD) MRI shows promise as a non-invasive, direct clinical metric of pancreatic function. Prior work utilizing a breath-hold protocol has revealed challenges with applying this dynamic imaging to the pancreas. Approach: We hope to address these issues by using a free-breathing motion-corrected qBOLD technique. Results: Healthy volunteers displayed decreases in T2* values after glucose ingestion. T2* fits were comparable to breath-hold acquisitions with reduced segmentation time. Impact: Our results support the feasibility of a free-breathing protocol for functional pancreatic imaging as a more executable approach for patient populations, providing improved resource efficiency, i.e., reduced patient burden and lower processing costs compared to current breath-hold techniques.