Abstract #1870

MR Cell Tracking in Reperfused Myocardial Infarction with Microvascular Obstruction and Haemorrhage: Fluorine-19 MR Could Be a Better Solution

Yuxiang Ye¹, Thomas C. Basse-Luesekrink¹, Paula Arias², Kai Hu², Thomas Kampf¹, Vladimir Kocoski³, Xavier Helluy¹, Peter M. Jakob^1,4, Karl-Heinz Hiller^1,4, Roland Jahns², Wolfgang R. Bauer²

¹Department for Experimental Physics 5, University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Bavaria, Germany; ²Deptment of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Wuerzburg; ³Institute for Virology & Immunobiology, University of Wuerzburg, Germany; ⁴MRB Research Center, Magnetic-Resonance-Bavaria, Wuerzburg, Germany

MR Cell tracking with iron oxide labeling has high sensitivity but could be severely interfered by strong local magnetic susceptibility effects. We show that Fluorine-19 MRI could unambiguously detect blood monocytes/macrophages labeled with perfluorocarbon emulsion infiltrating the haemorrhagic myocardial infarct (MI) core both in vivo and ex vivo in a rat model at 7-T, despite the presence of strong local magnetic susceptibility effects caused by degraded hemoglobin products in microvascular obstruction or haemorrhage, which often occurs after reperfusion therapy . This finding suggests that Fluorine-19 MRI could be a better approach for MR cell tracking in where local T2* effects interfere the detection of magnetically labeled cells.