Quantitative cardiovascular magnetic resonance for molecular imaging

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) molecular imaging aims to identify and map the expression of important biomarkers on a cellular scale utilizing contrast agents that are specifically targeted to the biochemical signatures of disease and are capable of generating sufficient image contrast. In some cases, the contrast agents may be designed to carry a drug payload or to be sensitive to important physiological factors, such as pH, temperature or oxygenation. In this review, examples will be presented that utilize a number of different molecular imaging quantification techniques, including measuring signal changes, calculating the area of contrast enhancement, mapping relaxation time changes or direct detection of contrast agents through multi-nuclear imaging or spectroscopy. The clinical application of CMR molecular imaging could offer far reaching benefits to patient populations, including early detection of therapeutic response, localizing ruptured atherosclerotic plaques, stratifying patients based on biochemical disease markers, tissue-specific drug delivery, confirmation and quantification of end-organ drug uptake, and noninvasive monitoring of disease recurrence. Eventually, such agents may play a leading role in reducing the human burden of cardiovascular disease, by providing early diagnosis, noninvasive monitoring and effective therapy with reduced side effects

A Multi-Camera System for Bioluminescence Tomography in Preclinical Oncology Research

Bioluminescent imaging (BLI) of cells expressing luciferase is a valuable noninvasive technique for investigating molecular events and tumor dynamics in the living animal. Current usage is often limited to planar imaging, but tomographic imaging can enhance the usefulness of this technique in quantitative biomedical studies by allowing accurate determination of tumor size and attribution of the emitted light to a specific organ or tissue. Bioluminescence tomography based on a single camera with source rotation or mirrors to provide additional views has previously been reported. We report here in vivo studies using a novel approach with multiple rotating cameras that, when combined with image reconstruction software, provides the desired representation of point source metastases and other small lesions. Comparison with MRI validated the ability to detect lung tumor colonization in mouse lung