Preparation and Characterisation of Highly Stable Iron Oxide Nanoparticles for Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Magnetic nanoparticles produced using aqueous coprecipitation usually exhibit wide particle size distribution. Synthesis of small and uniform magnetic nanoparticles has been the subject of extensive research over recent years. Sufficiently small superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles easily permeate tissues and may enhance the contrast in magnetic resonance imaging. Furthermore, their unique small size also allows them to migrate into cells and other body compartments. To better control their synthesis, a chemical coprecipitation protocol was carefully optimised regarding the influence of the injection rate of base and incubation times. The citrate-stabilised particles were produced with a narrow average size range below 2nm and excellent stability. The stability of nanoparticles was monitored by long-term measurement of zeta potentials and relaxivity. Biocompatibility was tested on the Caki-2 cells with good tolerance. The application of nanoparticles for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was then evaluated. The relaxivities and ratio calculated from MR images of prepared phantoms indicate the nanoparticles as a promising -contrast probe

Blind Multi-Channel Estimation of Arterial Input Function in Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI

Estimation of arterial input function in dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI based on blind multichannel regularization

Výuka zobrazovacích systémů na Ústavu biomedicínského inženýrství FEKT VUT v Brně

Příspěvek pojednává o výuce zobrazovacích systémů v rámci studijních programů v oblasti biomedicínského inženýrství na Ústavu biomedicínského inženýrství FEKT VUT v Brně. V rámci jednotlivých kapitol je představeno zařazení předmětů do studijních plánů, jejich obsah a formy výuky. Další kapitola představuje dostupné přístrojové vybavení na pracovišti a jejich užití v laboratorních úlohách. Samostatná podkapitola je věnována také softwarové podpoře výuky a exkurzím na brněnských pracovištích, se kterými spolupracujeme

Comparison of Pharmacokinetic Models for Quantification of Blood-Brain-Barrier Opening Induced by Focused Ultrasound

This paper focuses on quantification of blood-brainbarrier(BBB) opening induced by focused ultrasound. Dynamiccontrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) with two different pharmacokineticmodels, 2CX and ETK, is used to evaluate BBB opening.The ETK model is commonly used in BBB-opening studies. Wepropose use of a more advanced model, 2CX, that provides moreaccurate estimation of the BBB permeability. The accuracy of themodels is compared using simulated and real data. The resultsdemonstrate similar performance of the 2CX and ETK models inthe brain region with a highly permeable BBB, but the ETK hasproven unable to correctly detect low level of permeabilization.Thus, the 2CX model is more suitable for the studies of BBBpermeabilitydynamics

Contrast-enhanced ultrasonography of the pancreas shows impaired perfusion in pancreas insufficient cystic fibrosis patients

Abstract Background Perfusion assessment of the pancreas is challenging and poorly evaluated. Pancreatic affection is a prevalent feature of cystic fibrosis (CF). Little is known about pancreatic perfusion in CF. We aimed to assess pancreatic perfusion by contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) analysed in the bolus-and-burst model and software. Methods We performed contrast enhanced ultrasound of the pancreas in 25 CF patients and 20 healthy controls. Perfusion data was analysed using a dedicated perfusion model providing the mean capillary transit-time (MTT), blood flow (BF) and blood-volume (BV). CF patients were divided according to exocrine function. Results The pancreas insufficient CF patients had longer MTT (p ≤ 0.002), lower BF (p < 0.001) and lower BV (p < 0.05) compared to the healthy controls and sufficient CF patients. Interrater analysis showed substantial agreement for the analysis of mean transit time. Conclusion The bolus-and-burst method used on pancreatic CEUS-examinations demonstrates reduced perfusion in CF patients with pancreas affection. The perfusion model and software requires further optimization and standardization to be clinical applicable for the assessment of pancreatic perfusion

Time-Efficient Perfusion Imaging Using DCE- and DSC-MRI

Dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) and dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI (DSC-MRI) are perfusion imaging techniques used mainly for clinical and preclinical measurement of vessel permeability and capillary blood flow, respectively. It is advantageous to apply both methods to exploit their complementary information about the perfusion status of the tissue. We propose a novel acquisition method that combines advantages of the current simultaneous and sequential acquisition. The proposed method consists of a DCE-MRI acquisition interrupted by DSC-MRI acquisition. A new method for processing of the DCE-MRI data is proposed which takes the interleaved acquisition into account. Analysis of both the DCE- and DSC-MRI data is reformulated so that they are approximated by the same pharmacokinetic model (constrained distributed capillary adiabatic tissue homogeneity model). This provides a straightforward evaluation of the methodology as some of the estimated DCE- and DSC-MRI perfusion parameters should be identical. Evaluation on synthetic data showed an acceptable precision and no apparent bias introduced by the interleaved character of the DCE-MRI acquisition. Intravascular perfusion parameters obtained from clinical glioma data showed a fairly high correlation of blood flow estimates from DCE- and DSC-MRI, however, an unknown scaling factor was still present mainly because of the tissue-specific r2*$r_2^*$ relaxivity. The results show validity of the proposed acquisition method. They also indicate that simultaneous processing of both DCE- and DSC-MRI data with joint estimation of some perfusion parameters (included in both DCE- and DSC-MRI) might be possible to increase the reliability of the DCE- and DSC-MRI methods alone