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High-resolution Phosphocreatine and Creatine Mapping of Human Muscle and Brain

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT04234880

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04234880. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Jul 31, 2026, 9:09 AM EDT

Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

In this study, we aim to develop and validate a noninvasive approach for quantifying and imaging energy metabolism, without contrast agents, on widely available clinical MRI scanners. Briefly, this technique allows specific and selective imaging of the energy metabolite phosphocreatine (PCr), in vivo and non-invasively. PCr is one of the predominant high-energy phosphates present in brain and muscle and one that is altered by common diseases. Although energy metabolism and PCr play a vital role in cellular homeostasis, there currently are no routine diagnostic tests to noninvasively quantify or map the distribution of PCr with clinically acceptable spatial resolution or/and scan time. Here, we demonstrate that the exchangeable guanidinium protons of millimolar concentration PCr can be exploited to detect it via the water signal in MRI with greatly enhanced sensitivity (molar signal) using chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI, and its concentration can be quantified using an artificial neural network (ANN). This new technique, dubbed ANNCEST, allowed us to obtain a high-resolution PCr map on human skeletal muscle within 1.5 min, on a 3T clinical MRI scanner equipped with just the standard MRI setup. To put this in a larger perspective, energy metabolism is critical for cell viability and is altered by many common acquired and inherited diseases. ANNCEST is arguably the first to use widely available MRI scanners to noninvasively image tissue energy metabolism of PCr, and thus would have appeal to a broad readership of scientists and clinicians interested in neurology, muscular dystrophies and myopathies as well as cardiology, to name a few.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT04234880
Recruitment status
Recruiting
Study type
Observational
Phase
Not listed
Enrollment
50 participants

Conditions and interventions

Conditions

Interventions

Not listed

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
18 Years to 80 Years
Sex
All
Healthy volunteers
Accepts healthy volunteers

This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.

Study timeline

Start date
Dec 31, 2017
Primary completion
Dec 29, 2028
Completion
Dec 29, 2030
Last update posted
Mar 6, 2025

2018 – 2030

United States locations

U.S. sites
1
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
F. M. Kirby Center and Johns Hopkins University Medical School Baltimore Maryland 21205-1832 Recruiting

Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.

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About this trial record page

What this page shows
Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04234880, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
What this page does not do
No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
Where the data comes from
Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
Last refresh
Last update posted Mar 6, 2025 · Synced Jul 31, 2026

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Open the official record

The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT04234880 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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