Visualization of Digestion Process Using ¹⁹F MRI

Tracing parameters of digestion process could help in setting more accurate diagnosis for patients with gastrointestinal diseases. For this purpose, we suggest a new type of food tracer. By soaking liquid perfluorocarbon in dry rodent food, each step of digestion process can be visualized on 19F-magnetic resonance (MR) images. Compared with liquid contrast agents, food is able to fill organs of gastrointestinal tract more tightly and yield properties of digestion process. However, rats, participating in such study, should be set on a water diet before experiment. 19F-MR images are obtained with volume scanning (3D) pulse sequence based on multiple spin echo methodic with minimal time intervals between echoes. Gastrointestinal 19F-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) visualization is a harmless real-time tracking method which could be easily transferred into clinical practice. Moreover, it does not apply ionizing radiation, so in the combination with reference 1H-MRI this method could become very useful in treatment process assessment.