Simultaneous Measurement of Blood Flow and Oxygen Consumption Immediately Post-Exercise with Magnetic Resonance Imaging

• Author / Creator

  Mathewson, Kory W.

• Invasively measuring blood flow and oxygen consumption during exercise has been used to help advance performance, stratify fitness levels and most importantly to aid in clinical diagnoses and track disease or recovery progression. There is currently no non-invasive method for measuring skeletal muscle oxygen consumption and its determinants during dynamic exercise, which is necessary to expose mechanisms of dysfunction along the oxygen cascade in health and disease. In this thesis, I propose a new imaging approach which interleaves complex-difference (CD) and susceptometry magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) pulse sequences for real-time imaging of venous blood flow (VBF) and venous oxygen saturation (SvO2), respectively, for the calculation of skeletal muscle oxygen consumption (VO2). The goal of the major study comprising this thesis was to determine the reproducibility of this novel approach during sub-maximal single-leg knee-extensor (SLKE) exercise. When combined with cardiac and vascular studies, these non-invasive methods provide a possibility to investigate the relative contributions of the mechanisms reducing exercise capacity in those at risk for or with heart failure.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Blood Flow
  • Exercise Physiology
  • Oxygen Consumption

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R37S7J026

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.