New Magnetic nanoparticles as MRI/PET agents

17 August 2008

For diagnosing tumors, doctors conventionally use the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computational tomographgy (CT) and positron emission tomographgy (PET). Although these technologies are quite advance even then these have their own limitations. Nanotechnology researchers throughout the globe are in the process of finding useful contract agents that can be used in new generation scientific imaging and computational devices.

Recently two new research reports were published in different journals and both of these reports are based on the use of dual mode magnetic nanoparticles in MRI & PET imaging devices. The first was published by Dr. Jinwoo Cheon and his colleagues in the journal “Angewandte Chemie International Edition” and the second paper was published by Dr Xiaoyuan Chen and his collaborators in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Dr Cheon and his colleagues created an albumin coated manganese and iron mixed magnetic nanoparticle and for improving PET functionality, attached radioactive iodine to this nanoparticle and carried out spatial resolution test on it. Researchers further carried out additional tests to image sentinel lymph nodes in mice, as sentinel lymph node is important test to check metastasis. All the MRI and PET scans were far better and there was no ambiguity in identifying the separate lymph nodes.

In another study Dr Chen and his team created an iron oxide nanoparticle and attached with peptide and organic molecule. The researchers use this magnetic nanoparticle for detecting tumors in mice and found that the combined MRI/PET scan are much more useful.

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