Magnetic Resonance as a Tool for in Vivo Measurement of Metabolic Dynamics in Brain

Magnetic Resonance (MR) has a huge potential as a clinical diagnostic tool that has yet to be developed. As the development of these MR tools progresses, the leading applications should include the non-invasive monitoring of metabolic-and pharmaco-dynamics within living tissue. In this paper, I introduce two experimental applications demonstrating these types of in vivo MR applications. One is the in vivo monitoring of water environmental changes over anti-edema drug administration in focal ischemic cerebral edema. The other is the magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) monitoring of in vivo pharmaco-dynamics of the polyol pathway in diabatic rats. Based on the directness and non-invasive nature of in vivo MR measurements, we can expect these methods will be widely adopted for clinical use in the near future