Pulse Sequence Programming for Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Deuterium Imaging and Glioblastoma Detection

Glioblastoma brain tumors are among the most lethal human cancers. Treatment efforts typically involve both surgical tumor removal, as well as ongoing therapy. In this work, we propose the use of deuterium magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to delineate tumor boundaries based on spatial distributions of deuterated leucine, as well as resolve the metabolism of leucine within the tumor. Accurate boundary identification contributes to effectiveness of tumor removal efforts, while amino acid metabolism information may help characterize tumor malignancy and guide ongoing treatment. So, we first examine the fundamental mechanisms of deuterium MRI. We then discuss the use of spin-echo and gradient recall echo sequences for mapping spatial distributions of deuterated leucine, and the use of single-voxel spectroscopy for imaging metabolites within a tumor.