Rong Zhou1, Djaudat Idiyatullin2, Steen Moeller2, Curt Corum2, Hualei Zhang1, Michael Garwood2
1Labotories of Molecular Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 2Center for Magnetic Resonance Research , University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
We demonstrate the feasibility of (SWIFT) based detection of superparamagnetic iron-oxide (SPIO) labeled stem cells in the heart. We show that SWIFT allows 3-dimensional imaging of SPIO labeled cells while simultaneously presenting T1-weighted signal of myocardial wall. Compared to T2*W GRE images, SWIFT magnitude images suppress the susceptibility artifacts leading to better delineation of stem cell distribution while SWFT imaginary images present an enhanced (positive) boundary between regions containing high concentration of SPIOs and the surrounding myocardium.