Synopsis

Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) is a new imaging modality first presented in 2005. While the acronym resembles that of MRI, MPI uses a completely different imaging hardware than MRI. This presentation will cover the basics and imaging applications of MPI that include angiography, cancer imaging, and stem cell tracking, and will also discuss future directions for this promising technology.

Purpose

Introduction

Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) is a new imaging modality first presented in 2005 [1]-[3]. While the acronym resembles that of MRI, MPI uses a completely different imaging hardware than MRI. MPI images the spatial distribution of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles, which are introduced into the body as MPI imaging tracers. Unlike the usage of SPIOs that yield negative contrast images in MRI, MPI generates extremely high contrast images of the SPI distribution in vivo, without any background signal from the tissue. This new technology has already been shown in imaging applications such as angiography [4,5], cancer imaging [6], and stem cell tracking [7,8].

This presentation will cover the basics and imaging applications of MPI, and will also discuss future directions for this promising technology.

Acknowledgements

References

[1] B. Gleich and J. Weizenecker, “Tomographic imaging using the nonlinear response of magnetic particles.,” Nature, vol. 435, no. 7046, pp. 1214–1217, Jun. 2005.

[2] E. U. Saritas, P. W. Goodwill, L. R. Croft, J. J. Konkle, K. Lu, B. Zheng, and S. M. Conolly, “Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) for NMR and MRI researchers.,” J. Magn. Reson., vol. 229, pp. 116–126, Apr. 2013.

[3] P. W. Goodwill, E. U. Saritas, L. R. Croft, T. N. Kim, K. M. Krishnan, D. V. Schaffer, and S. M. Conolly, “X-space MPI: magnetic nanoparticles for safe medical imaging.,” Adv. Mater. Weinheim, vol. 24, no. 28, pp. 3870–3877, Jul. 2012.

[4] Weizenecker J, Gleich B, Rahmer J, Dahnke H and Borgert J, "Three-dimensional real-time in vivo magnetic particle imaging". Phys. Med. Biol. 54 L1–10, 2009.

[5] K. Lu, P. W. Goodwill, E. U. Saritas, B. Zheng, and S. M. Conolly, “Linearity and shift invariance for quantitative magnetic particle imaging.,” IEEE Trans Med Imaging, vol. 32, no. 9, pp. 1565–1575, Sep. 2013.

[6] E. Y. Yu, M. Bishop, B. Zheng, R. M. Ferguson, A. P. Khandhar, S. J. Kemp, K. M. Krishnan, P. W. Goodwill, and S. M. Conolly, “Magnetic Particle Imaging: A Novel in Vivo Imaging Platform for Cancer Detection,” Nano Lett., vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 1648–1654, Feb. 2017.

[7] B. Zheng, T. Vazin, P. W. Goodwill, A. Conway, A. Verma, E. U. Saritas, D. Schaffer, and S. M. Conolly, “Magnetic Particle Imaging tracks the long-term fate of in vivo neural cell implants with high image contrast,” Nature Publishing Group, pp. 1–9, Aug. 2015.

[8] Them K, Salamon J, Szwargulski P, Sequeira S, Kaul M G, Lange C, Ittrich H and Knopp T, "Increasing the sensitivity for stem cell monitoring in system-function based magnetic particle imaging" Phys. Med. Biol. 61 3279–90, 2016.