Joseph B.
Mandeville1, Krishna Srihasam2, Wim Vanduffel1,
Margaret S. Livingstone2
1Martinos Center for Biomedical
Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; 2Department
of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
Feraheme
is a newly FDA-approved drug for treating chronic iron anemia in clinical
populations. The approved iron dose of 510 mg falls within a
weight-normalized range of 5-10 mg/kg for human subjects within the range
50-100 kg. To evaluate this drug as a potential contrast-enhancing agent for
human clinical fMRI, we performed experiments in awake non-human primates at
3 Tesla to validate theoretical calculations. Results suggest that this agent
could enhance the CNR ratio of clinical fMRI by factors of 5 and 2.5 and 1.5
at 3 Tesla, respectively.