James A. Rioux1,2, Steven D. Beyea2,3, Chris V. Bowen2,3
1Department of Physics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada; 2National Research Council - Institute for Biodiagnostics (Atlantic), Halifax, NS, Canada; 3Departments of Physics, Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
The evaluation of cellular therapies with MRI requires techniques which can quantitatively image cell populations labelled with high concentrations of iron oxide. We are exploring the use of TurboSPI, an accelerated single point imaging method, to quantitatively measure R2*, which can be related to cellular density and iron content. TurboSPI images retain signal from high R2* regions, and can quantify R2* over a range inaccessible to tradtional techniques. For MPIO particles, R2* up to 600 s-1 can be quantified, corresponding to an iron concentration of 28 ug/mL. For SPIO compartmentalized in cells, TurboSPI should permit quantification up to R2* of 3000 s-1 or higher.