Helium-Based MRI, Probes Deeper into Smoker's Lung

Filed in archive Diagnostics on June 12, 2006

"Healthy" smokers are those that don't often display the telltale signs of tobacco use. But with the aid of a powerful technique, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison are able to detect smoking-related lung damage.

The procedure involves tracking the movement in the respiratory organs of a harmless gas, helium. This gas can be inhaled and visually detected via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that then produces high-contrast of the body's soft tissues.

Using helium is unlike the traditional MRI which typically only distinguishes body tissue form each other by tracking differences in their water content.

As reported in the journal Radiology, the UW-Madison scientists suggests that, as compared to existing imaging methods, the helium-based approach could enable doctors to assess lung health more accurately, as well as spot smoking-associated diseases much sooner.

"It's one thing to see a [lung] disease that was already diagnosed, but another to see changes that no one predicted were there," says lead author Sean Fain, a UW-Madison assistant professor of medical physics. "This approach allows us to look at lung micro-structures that are on the scale of less than a millimeter."

Cigarettes can contribute to the onset of respiratory conditions such as emphysema, bronchitis and asthma. In emphysema in particular, the alveoli - tiny sacs in the lungs that transfer oxygen to blood - gradually break down. Fain and his team therefore reasoned that helium gas molecules are likely to have more space to move around in lungs with fewer functioning alveoli.

Read more at UW-Madison News.