Low Threshold Detection of USPIO Concentrations in Different Environments Simulating Tissue Diversity

Sherif R. Fahmy¹, Todd Parrish¹

Different diffusion environments are simulated using solutions of varying PEG 400 volume fraction. A double-band pulse is used for off-resonance pre-saturation, and pulse parameters are tuned to obtain the best detection of USPIO agent. The threshold of lowest detectable concentration of USPIO in the different diffusion environments is noted. The significance of the work is that it verifies the ability of the off-resonance saturation technique to detect low concentrations of USPIO in environments that simulate real biological or clinical applications.