Iron oxide nanoparticles – Tracer for magnetic particle imaging

Abstract

Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) is a tomographic imaging technique, which relies on the nonlinearity of the magnetization curves of magnetic particles such as iron oxide nanoparticles and the fact that the particle magnetization saturates at some magnetic field strength (1). Sensitivity of MPI highly depends on the magnetic characteristics of used tracer. We have developed colloidal stable iron oxide nanoparticles with different sizes and coatings and optimized their magnetic properties using a variety of fractionation techniques to improve tracer sensitivity. MPI spectra were obtained on the various iron oxide nanoparticles to select the most sensitive tracer for plaque imaging in homozygous mice for the Apoetm1Unc mutation. We conclude that iron oxide nanoparticles with appropriate magnetic properties are useful tracers for MPI.