Publications

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Journal Articles

Ungated, plug-and-play preclinical cardiac CEST-MRI using radial FLASH with segmented saturation

Published in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2024

The proposed method consists of segmented saturation modules with radial FLASH readouts and golden angle progression. The segmented saturation blocks drive the system to steady-state, and because center k-space is sampled repeatedly, steady-state saturation dominates contrast during gridding and reconstruction. Ten complete Z-spectra were acquired in healthy mice using both ECG and respiratory-gated and ungated methods. Z-spectra were also acquired at multiple saturation B1 values to optimize for amide and Cr contrasts.

Recommended citation: Weigand-Whittier J, et al. (2024). "Ungated, plug-and-play preclinical cardiac CEST-MRI using radial FLASH with segmented saturation" Magn Reson Med. 93(1793-1806).
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Accelerated and quantitative three‐dimensional molecular MRI using a generative adversarial network

Published in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2022

Three‐dimensional CEST and MT magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) datasets of L‐arginine phantoms, whole‐brains, and calf muscles from healthy volunteers, cancer patients, and cardiac patients were acquired using 3T clinical scanners at three different sites, using three different scanner models and coils. A saturation transfer‐oriented generative adversarial network (GAN‐ST) supervised framework was then designed and trained to learn the mapping from a reduced input data space to the quantitative exchange parameter space, while preserving perceptual and quantitative content.

Recommended citation: Weigand-Whittier J, et al. (2022). "Accelerated and quantitative three‐dimensional molecular MRI using a generative adversarial network" Magn Reson Med. 89(1901-1914).
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Conference Papers

Comparison of CEST analysis in Z and 1/Z for exchange rate quantification in tissue-like systems

Published in Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference, 2026

Accurate estimations of exchange rates are crucial for the development of quantitative methods in chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST). However, the exchange rates of key metabolites (e.g, creatine, glutamate) in biological tissue remain a source of debate within the CEST community. We demonstrate the utility of ultrafast Z-spectroscopy (UFZS) combined with Pseudo-Voigt fitting and 1/Z analysis for rapid and accurate quantification of exchange rates in tissue-like systems with multiple overlapping CEST pools and strong magnetization transfer effects. Additionally, we show that the estimation of proton volume fractions and exchange rates using the analytical “QUantification of Exchange rates using varying Saturation Powers” (QUESP) equations is highly dependent upon the method used for summing CEST contrasts, particularly in tissue-like systems.

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Pre-CAT: Open-source tools for pre-clinical CEST-MRI data analysis

Published in ISMRM & ISMRT Annual Meeting and Exhibition, 2025

CEST is an emerging MRI technique capable of detecting small biochemical changes in vivo, providing valuable insights into the pathophysiology of various disease models; however, the lack of standardized tools for data processing complicates the sharing and interpretation of experimental results.

Recommended citation: Weigand-Whittier J, et al. (2025). "Pre-CAT: Open-source tools for pre-clinical CEST-MRI data analysis; Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of ISMRM.
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Jonah Weigand-Whittier