Patrick Goodwill1, Gary Lee1, Greig Scott2, Pascal Stang2, Steve Conolly3
1Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering, UC Berkeley / UCSF, Berkeley, CA, USA; 2Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 3Bioengineering, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) is a new imaging modality that promises long-term detection and tracking of nano-mol/L concentrations of super-paramagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) commonly used as MRI contrast agents. We measured the sensitivity of a small bore (3.8cm free bore, 1.5cm usable bore) prototype MPI system. The prototype we have developed uses narrowband MPI, allowing small receive bandwidths at high frequencies with a clear path towards body noise dominance. With the significant SNR improvement over MRI, we see great potential for MPI to directly detect SPIOs enabling rapid angiography, inflammation tracking and stem cell tracking.