Non-invasive, clinically applicable tracking of therapeutic cells by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers unparalleled insight into the safety and efficacy of cell-based therapies in the body. Here we used a series of 3D quantitative UTE techniques including UTE-QSM, UTE-T1, and UTE-T2* mapping to evaluate the MR characteristics of stem cells labeled with a proprietary nanoparticle formulation that simultaneously labels cells for both optical and MR imaging. In a phantom experiment, all quantitative UTE parameters showed strong correlation with concentrations of labeled stem cells. Interestingly, in ex vivo mouse imaging, only UTE-QSM and UTE-T2* mapping detected the injected, labeled stem cells.
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