Evaluation of Pulmonary Ventilation in COVID-19 Patients Using Oxygen-enhanced Three-dimensional Ultrashort Echo Time MRI: a Preliminary Study

Aim: To evaluate the lung function of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients using oxygen-enhanced (OE) ultrashort echo time (UTE) MRI.

Materials And Methods: Forty-nine patients with COVID-19 were included in the study. The OE-MRI was based on a respiratory-gated three-dimensional (3D) radial UTE sequence. For each patient, the percent signal enhancement (PSE) map was calculated using the expression PSE = (S - S)/S, where S and S are signals acquired during room air and 100% oxygen inhalation, respectively. Agreement of lesion detectability between UTE-MRI and computed tomography (CT) was performed using the kappa test. The Mann-Whitney U-test was used to evaluate the difference in the mean PSE between mild-type COVID-19 and common-type COVID-19. Spearman's test was used to assess the relationship between lesion mean PSE and lesion size. Furthermore, the Mann-Whitney U-test was used to evaluate the difference in region of interest (ROI) mean PSE between normal pulmonary parenchyma and lesions. The Kruskal-Wallis test was applied to test the difference in the mean PSE between different lesion types.

Results: CT and UTE-MRI reached good agreement in lesion detectability. Ventilation measures in mild-type patients (5.3 ± 5.5%) were significantly different from those in common-type patients (3 ± 3.9%). Besides, there was no significant correlation between lesion mean PSE and lesion size. The mean PSE of COVID-19 lesions (3.2 ± 4.9%) was significantly lower than that of the pulmonary parenchyma (5.4 ± 3.9%). No significant difference was found among different lesion types.

Conclusion: OE-UTE-MRI could serve as a promising method for the assessment of lung function or treatment management of COVID-19 patients.