多核磁共振成像助力新冠肺炎疫情防控

Multi-Nuclei Magnetic Resonance Imaging Assists Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic

新型冠状病毒肺炎(简称“新冠肺炎”)疫情在全球仍持续处于大流行阶段,目前全球范围内累积确诊病例超5亿。肺部和脑部损伤在新冠肺炎患者中最为常见,一些患者在出院后数周乃至数月仍有相关症状。医学影像技术在受累器官的结构和功能的诊断评估中发挥了重要作用。本文回顾了临床放射学在新型冠状病毒感染引起的肺部和脑部损伤评估中的应用现状,介绍了我们用于新冠肺炎预测与功能评估的新影像技术,进一步阐述了多核肺部磁共振成像原理及其在我国的发展,简述了基于我国自主研发的多核肺部磁共振成像装备对新冠肺炎患者肺部功能改变的定量可视化评估,以及对肺部和脑部损伤之间的关联研究。研究结果表明多核磁共振成像在新型冠状病毒致肺功能损伤评估中具有独特优势,可点亮传统影像的肺部“盲区”。

Coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)is still an ongoing global pandemic,and so far more than 500 million confirmed cases have been reported around the world.Lung and brain injuries are the most common clinical symptoms in patients with COVID-19,and some patients might suffer the symptoms of long COVID for more than weeks or even months after discharge from hospital.Medical imaging techniques have played an important role in diagnosing and evaluating the structure and functional changes of the damaged organs caused by COVID-19.Herein,we briefly reviewed the applications of clinical imaging techniques for assessing the brain and lung injuries caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus,and the new methods we developed for predicting the COVID-19 pneumonia progress and pulmonary function evaluation based on the clinical imaging techniques.Additionally,we also reviewed the development of multi-nuclei magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)in China,and its applications for quantitative evaluation of pulmonary function injury caused by COVID-19 using our self-developed multi-nuclei MRI instruments.These results showed that the technique of multi-nuclei MRI could light up the“black hole”of the lung in MRI,and has unique advantages in quantitatively evaluating pulmonary function injury caused by COVID-19.