Repeatability of deuterium metabolic imaging of healthy volunteers at 3 T

Background: Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of deuterated glucose, termed deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI), is emerging as a biomarker of pathway-specific glucose metabolism in tumors. DMI is being studied as a useful marker of treatment response in a scan-rescan scenario. This study aims to evaluate the repeatability of brain DMI.

Methods: A repeatability study was performed in healthy volunteers from December 2022 to March 2023. The participants consumed 75 g of [6,6'-²H₂]glucose. The delivery of ²H-glucose to the brain and its conversion to ²H-glutamine + glutamate, ²H-lactate, and ²H-water DMI was imaged at baseline and at 30, 70, and 120 min. DMI was performed using MR spectroscopic imaging on a 3-T system equipped with a ¹H/²H-tuned head coil. Coefficients of variation (CoV) were computed for estimation of repeatability and between-subject variability. In a set of exploratory analyses, the variability effects of region, processing, and normalization were estimated.

Results: Six male participants were recruited, aged 34 ± 6.5 years (mean ± standard deviation). There was 42 ± 2.7 days between sessions. Whole-brain levels of glutamine + glutamate, lactate, and glucose increased to 3.22 ± 0.4 mM, 1.55 ± 0.3 mM, and 3 ± 0.7 mM, respectively. The best signal-to-noise ratio and repeatability was obtained at the 120-min timepoint. Here, the within-subject whole-brain CoVs were -10% for all metabolites, while the between-subject CoVs were -20%.

Conclusions: DMI of glucose and its downstream metabolites is feasible and repeatable on a clinical 3 T system.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT05402566 , registered the 25th of May 2022.

Relevance statement: Brain deuterium metabolic imaging of healthy volunteers is repeatable and feasible at clinical field strengths, enabling the study of shifts in tumor metabolism associated with treatment response.

Key points: • Deuterium metabolic imaging is an emerging tumor biomarker with unknown repeatability. • The repeatability of deuterium metabolic imaging is on par with FDG-PET. • The study of deuterium metabolic imaging in clinical populations is feasible.