Abstract #0215

In Vivo Monitoring of Bacterial Infections Using High-Field MR Microscopy

Volker Sturm¹, Tobias Hertlein², Thomas Basse-Lsebrink¹, Daniel Haddad³, Knut Ohlsen², Peter Jakob^1,3

¹Experimental Physics 5, University of Wrzburg, Wrzburg, Germany; ²Institute for Molecular Infection Biology, University of Wrzburg, Wrzburg, Germany; ³Research Center for Magnetic Resonance Bavaria e.V., Wrzburg, Germany

In vivo monitoring of bacterial infection allows effective testing of potential new drugs and active compounds. Therefore we investigate native (T2) and marker (19F) based MRI methods for those requirements. Here the T2 maps have been proved to be able to visualize the inflammation formation in a mouse muscle abscess model at even early stages (day 2), while the 19F- marker accumulate in the area of infection. The latter has the potential to deliver new insights into the process of host-pathogen interaction, even though the exact mode of accumulation had to be investigated further.