Xiaodong Zhong1, Longjiang Zhang2,3,
Liya Wang2, Hongwei Chen2, Julie Yeh2,
Andrew Wang4, Hui Mao2
1MR R&D Collaborations, Siemens
Healthcare, Atlanta, GA, United States; 2Department of Radiology,
Center for Systems Imaging, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States; 3Department
of Radiology, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University College of Clinical
Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China; 4Ocean NanoTech, LLC,
Springdale, AR, United States
Negative
contrast of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) on conventional T2
weighted images may suffer from poor contrast to noise ratio (CNR). This
study demonstrated that positive T1 contrast from MNPs can be
obtained using ultrashort echo time (UTE) imaging, resulting higher CNR than
that of conventional T2 weighted imaging. Signal intensity of MNPs
in UTE images has a linear correlation with core size and concentration of
MNPs used in this study. Cell imaging with the UTE method also demonstrated
potential applications of UTE imaging of biomarker targeted MNPs with
contrast enhancement associated to the binding of cell targeted MNP.
Keywords