Abstract #0899

Phase Gradient Mapping (PGM) for Positive Contrast Generation

Sunbok Lee¹, Jason Langley¹, Wei Liu², Qun Zhao^1,3

¹Physics and Astronomy, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA; ²Philips research North America, Briarcliff, NY, USA; ³BioImaging Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

In vivo detection of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) contrast agent can be used in many applications such as cell tracking. In this study a new post-processing method, referred to as PGM (Phase Gradient Mapping) is proposed to obtain a positive contrast image. This method measures the derivative of a phase map to detect the field inhomogeneity induced by the SIPOs susceptibility gradient. The PGM results from a phantom dataset and in vivo mouse dataset show positive contrast generated around SPIO.