Extending the Lifetime of Hyperpolarized Propane Gas through Reversible Dissolution

• Published in: Journal of physical chemistry. C Vol. 121; no. 8; pp. 4481 - 4487
• Main Authors: Burueva, Dudari B, Romanov, Alexey S, Salnikov, Oleg G, Zhivonitko, Vladimir V, Chen, Yu-Wen, Barskiy, Danila A, Chekmenev, Eduard Y, Hwang, Dennis W, Kovtunov, Kirill V, Koptyug, Igor V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 02.03.2017
• ISSN: 1932-7447; 1932-7455
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.7b00509

Hyperpolarized (HP) propane produced by the parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) technique has been recently introduced as a promising contrast agent for functional lung magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. However, its short lifetime due to a spin–lattice relaxation time T 1 of less than 1 s in the gas phase is a significant translational challenge for its potential biomedical applications. The previously demonstrated approach for extending the lifetime of the HP propane state through long-lived spin states allows the HP propane lifetime to be increased by a factor of ∼3. Here, we demonstrate that a remarkable increase in the propane hyperpolarization decay time at high magnetic field (7.1 T) can be achieved by its dissolution in deuterated organic solvents (acetone-d 6 or methanol-d 4). The approximate values of the HP decay time for propane dissolved in acetone-d 6 are 35.1 and 28.6 s for the CH2 group and the CH3 group, respectively (similar values were obtained for propane dissolved in methanol-d 4), which are ∼50 times larger than the gaseous propane T 1 value. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to retrieve HP propane from solution to the gas phase with the preservation of hyperpolarization.