Imaging of Thromboinflammation by Multispectral19 F MRI

Abstract

The close interplay between thrombotic and immunologic processes plays an important physiological role in the immune defence after tissue injury and has the aim to reduce damage and to prevent the spread of invading pathogens. However, the uncontrolled or exaggerated activation of these processes can lead to pathological thromboinflammation. Thromboinflammation has been shown to worsen the outcome of cardiovascular, autoinflammatory, or even infectious diseases. Imaging of thromboinflammation is difficult because many clinically relevant imaging techniques can only visualize either inflammatory or thrombotic processes. One interesting option for the noninvasive imaging of thromboinflammation is multispectral19 F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Due to the large chemical shift range of the19 F atoms, it is possible to simultaneously visualize immune cells as well as thrombus components with specific19 F tracer that have individual spectral19 F signatures. Of note, the19 F signal can be easily quantified and a merging of the19 F datasets with the anatomical1 H MRI images enables precise anatomical localization. In this review, we briefly summarize the background of19 F MRI for inflammation imaging, active targeting approaches to visualize thrombi and specific immune cells, introduce studies about multispectral19 F MRI, and summarize one study that imaged thromboinflammation by multispectral19 F MRI.