verbatim): Noble gas isotopes that can be nuclear spin-polarized are very attractive imaging agents because of their high detection sensitivity for nuclear magnetic resonance. In particular, spin-polarized 3He enables fast, gas-space imaging of the lungs and airways for clinical diagnosis and physiological studies. Unfortunately, the limited availability of 3He severely limits the number of high-resolution lung imaging studies that can be performed. We propose to develop a system to recover and recycle the rare helium isotope so that high-resolution lung imaging can become common and inexpensive. The innovation is a cryogenic gas separation system that extracts and purifies the 3He from a patient's exhalation stream and saves it for re-polarization and reuse in other patients. In Phase I we proved the feasibility of the 3He recovery system by (1) performing a proof-of-concept test that demonstrates the feasibility of efficiently separating, purifying, and sterilizing the 3He from exhalation gases, and (2) producing a conceptual design of a complete system to recover and recycle 3He. In Phase II we will build and demonstrate a complete recovery and recycling system.
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