Simultaneous optical and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for monitoring cardiac energetics in vivo

There are a number of applications in which it is useful to simultaneously collect data from what are traditionally separate instrumentation modalities. In particular, in vivo physiological investigations in which data from parallel experiments must be correlated would benefit from simultaneous data collection through 1) elimination of subject variability, 2) elimination of treatment variability, and 3) a reduction in the number of animal preparations required. Here we describe the simultaneous collection of fluo-3 optical fluorescence and /sup 31/P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra to measure intracellular calcium levels and high-energy phosphate metabolism, respectively, in vivo. This work is part of ongoing research into the profound anoxia tolerance exhibited by the hearts of certain turtle species. An NMR compatible optical fluorescence spectrometer was constructed and tested. In the 31-cm bore of a 2 T superconducting magnet, NMR and optical spectra were collected every 10-15 min from the in situ, in vivo hearts of anesthetized turtle subjects prior to and during one to three hours of anoxia. It was found that while PCr Stores became significantly depleted during anoxia, /spl beta/-adenosine triphosphate (ATP) levels remained within 20% of control values, and intracellular diastolic calcium levels did not vary by more than 10%. The ability to make simultaneous phosphorus and calcium measurements on a single subject is important to understanding the exact relationship between phosphorus energy state and maintenance of calcium homeostasis.