Jeyarama Subramanian Ananta Naryanan1, Shingo Matsumoto2, James B. Mitchell2, Murali C. Krishna2, Lon J. Wilson1
1Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA; 2Radiation Biology, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Here, we present a new paradigm called Gadonanotubes (Carbon nanotubes filled internally with gadolinium ions) for low-field contrast-enhanced MR imaging and potential cell-trafficking studies. The Gadonanotubes have shown very high T1 relaxation efficiency (~160 mM-1 s-1) at very low field strength of 15 mT. Even higher efficiency is possible with improvised pulse sequences. In addition, the gadonanotubes have also shown to be very efficient in labeling cells, which could open new pathways for in vivo imaging and cell trafficking studies which are currently restricted at low-fields due to lack of contrast enhancement.