Simultaneous T2* mapping of 14N- and 15N-labeled dicarboxy-PROXYLs using CW-EPR-based single-point imaging

This article reports a method of simultaneous T2* mapping of 14N- and 15N-labeled dicarboxy-PROXYLs using 750-MHz continuous-wave electron paramagnetic resonance (CW-EPR) imaging. To separate the spectra of 14N- and 15N-labeled dicarboxy-PROXYLs under magnetic field gradients, an optimization problem for spectral projections was formulated with the spatial total variation as a regularization term and solved using a local search based on the gradient descent algorithm. Using the single-point imaging (SPI) method with spectral projections of each radical, simultaneous T2* mapping was performed for solution samples. Simultaneous T2* mapping enabled visualization of the response of T2* values to the level of dissolved oxygen in the solution. Simultaneous T2* mapping applied to a mouse tumor model demonstrated the feasibility of the reported method for potential application to in vivo oxygenation imaging.