Jerry S. Cheung1,2, April M. Chow1,2, Ed X. Wu1,2
1Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China; 2Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
Gas-filled microbubbles have the potential to become a unique MR contrast agent due to their magnetic susceptibility effect, biocompatibility and localized manipulation via ultrasound cavitation. In this study, custom-made albumin-coated microbubbles and a commercially available lipid-based clinical ultrasound contrast agent SonoVue were investigated with in vivo dynamic brain MRI in Sprague-Dawley rats at 7 Tesla. The results indicate that microbubbles can serve as an intravascular contrast agent for brain MRI at high field. Such microbubble MRI has the potential to provide real-time MRI guidance in various microbubble-based drug delivery and therapeutic applications.