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Innovative contrast agents for more… – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

EU-funded researchers have formulated an innovative and ‘smart’ prototype distinction mechanism for use in health care imaging that could give medical professionals with important new insights to enable diagnose injury and disease.


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Up to date on 17 July 2020

The EU-funded CONQUER job centered on enhancing and expanding the flexibility of distinction agents. These are substances that can be administered prior to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to much more clearly and precisely distinguish unique tissues and fluids in the physique: from muscle, cartilage and nerves to most cancers tumours and the motion of blood by means of arteries, veins and the mind.

The technological know-how is indispensable for knowing and diagnosing disease as effectively as developing new treatments. Having said that, the use of distinction mechanisms in MRI scans has been limited because of time and expense aspects, as effectively as concerns about publicity to some agents this sort of as those based on the uncommon-earth element gadolinium.

The CONQUER staff as a result sought greater and smarter possibilities, including distinction agents that can be turned on or off remotely by changing magnetic fields in purchase to make scans of unique tissues much more precise and versatile.

‘We have presented a proof of principle for a new distinction mechanism that gives two positive aspects. We now have the prospective to switch the distinction on and off, and we use an alternate agent to gadolinium about which there is open discussion about prospective toxicity problems,’ suggests job coordinator Hermann Scharfetter at Graz College of Technological innovation in Austria.

The CONQUER team’s exploration centered on a versatile distinction procedure known as ‘quadrupole rest enhancement’ which works on the foundation of how indicators generated by the spins of protons inside tissues decay, or ‘relax’, over time as they interact with the distinction agent. Rather of gadolinium-based substances, the CONQUER staff utilized novel bismuth-based agents.

‘We have confirmed for the initial time that quadrupole rest enhancement of solvent protons by the spin of bismuth nuclei is feasible in liquids. This opens up novel avenues for additional exploration in this location,’ Scharfetter suggests.

To support the use of new distinction agents, the job partners also formulated new resources for MRI scanners, including novel factors that have been equipped experimentally to a medical 3T MRI scanner, and which have resulted in a patent application.

Scharfetter and his staff are continuing exploration in the location with new assignments in the pipeline, driving ahead promising parts of examine centered in distinct on optimising nanoparticles in novel distinction agents. This ongoing function could noticeably greatly enhance the capability of MRI technological know-how to crank out a deeper knowing of disease and even much more productive and precise diagnoses for people.