Scientists develop scan that unravels secrets of lung function

A team of scientists has developed a new method of scanning lungs that is able to show the effects of treatment on lung function in real time, enabling them to see the functioning of transplanted lungs.

The scan method enabled the team, led by researchers at Newcastle University in the UK, to see how air moves in and out of the lungs as people take a breath in patients with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and patients who have received a lung transplant.

“We hope this new type of scan might allow us to see changes in the transplant lungs earlier and before signs of damage are present in the usual blowing tests. This would allow any treatment to be started earlier and help protect the transplanted lungs from further damage,” said Professor Andrew Fisher, Professor of Respiratory Transplant Medicine at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University, UK.

In the study published in Radiology and JHLT Open, the team explained how they use a special gas, called perfluoropropane, that can be seen on an MRI scanner.

The gas can be safely breathed in and out by patients, and then scans taken to look at where in the lungs the gas has reached.

“Our scans show where there is patchy ventilation in patients with lung disease, and show us which parts of the lung improve with treatment,” said project lead, Professor Pete Thelwall at Newcastle University.

The new scanning technique allows the team to quantify the degree of improvement in ventilation when patients have a treatment, in this case a widely used inhaler, the bronchodilator, salbutamol. This shows that the imaging methods could be valuable in clinical trials of new treatments of lung disease.

There is potential for this scan method to be used in the clinical management of lung transplant recipients and other lung diseases in the future, said researchers.