Metabolic Imaging with Deuterium Labeled Substrates

Deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) is an emerging clinically-applicable technique for the non-invasive investigation of tissue metabolism. The generally short T values of H-labeled metabolites in vivo can compensate for the relatively low sensitivity of detection by allowing rapid signal acquisition in the absence of significant signal saturation. Studies with deuterated substrates, including [6,6'-H]glucose, [H]acetate, [H]choline and [2,3-H]fumarate have demonstrated the considerable potential of DMI for imaging tissue metabolism and cell death in vivo. The technique is evaluated here in comparison with established metabolic imaging techniques, including PET measurements of 2-deoxy-2-[F]fluoro-d-glucose (FDG) uptake and C MR imaging of the metabolism of hyperpolarized C-labeled substrates.