Medical Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2012

Mentor:                       Craig Malloy
Department:              Advanced Imaging
Room number:         NE4.214
Mail Code:                 8568
Phone number:        214-645-2720
E-mail:                       craig.malloy@utsouthwestern.edu
Project title:   MR Imaging and Spectroscopy of Exercising Skeletal Muscle          

Human subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable):             092010-054

Project Type patient-based

Brief Description of Project:

For more than 20 years clinicians have known that exercise causes increase in water proton T1 and T2, as well as an increase in proton density in the exercising muscle. These studies were conducted at relatively low magnetic fields (0.35 to 1.5 Tesla) which precludes detecting other metabolites that change with exercise. Recently we have confirmed these earlier observations in studies at 7Tesla.  In addition, 7 Tesla allows us to monitor key metabolites such as lactate and acetyl-carnitine that are generated during exercise. In this project, Mr. Kraniski will assist Dr. Jimin Ren in correlating the change in image properties with changes in these metabolites. He will interact with healthy volunteer subjects, observe data acquisition on the 7T, and he will be responsible for analysis of the image and 1H spectroscopy data. If reliable correlations can be determined, then conventional imaging at low fields can be used as a surrogate for these metabolites.

Previous Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:

Khuu A, Ren J, Dimitrov I, Woessner D, Murdoch J, Sherry AD, Malloy CR. Orientation of lipid strands in the extracellular compartment of muscle: effect on quantitation of intramyocellular lipids. Magn Reson Med. 2009 Jan;61(1):16-21. PMID: 19097207