Abstract #1884

Kim Y, Kwon D, Kim H, Yoo S, Lee B, Park H, Kang S, Hwang W

The MRI detection of superparamagnetic iron-oxide particles (SPIO)- labeled cells is important in cell-replacement therapies. Cells loaded with SPIOs cause signal reduction (negative contrast) associated with dephasing due to the magnetic field inhomogeneity near the cell. Negative contrast agents have drawback of being confused with the signal void caused by other sources such as tissue inhomogeneity or partial volume effects. We provide simple means of detecting SPIO by using susceptibility weighted echo-time encoding technique (SWEET) whereby the subtraction of two sets of image volume acquired at slightly-shifted echo time resulted in enhancement of signal at the cell position.