Sonal Josan1,2, Amanda Hamilton3,
Michael Benoit3, Charles Cunningham4, Daniel Spielman2,
A. C. Matin3, Dirk Mayer1,2
1SRI International, Menlo
Park, CA, United States; 2Radiology, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA, United States; 3Microbiology & Immunology,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States; 4Sunnybrook
Health Sciences Center, Toronto, ON, Canada
This work compares two positive contrast imaging techniques for quantitative detection of endogenous magnetite particles generaated by magnetotactic bacteria: off-resonance excitation and susceptibility gradient mapping (SGM). Off-resonance excitation uses spectral-spatial pulses to excite and refocus the off-resonant water protons near the magnetite particles while the SGM method involves post-processing of conventional 3D gradient echo images to calculate susceptibility gradients induced by the particles. Both techniques visualize the magnetite spots and provide good background suppression. Both methods demonstrated a linear correlation, but with different slopes, between iron concentration and the integrated signal intensity of positive contrast voxels at the spot location.