Detection of myocardial capillary orientation with intravascular iron-oxide nanoparticles in spin-echo MRI

✍ Scribed by Alexandre Vignaud; Ignacio Rodriguez; Daniel B. Ennis; Ranil DeSilva; Peter Kellman; Joni Taylor; Eric Bennett; Han Wen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 611 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0740-3194
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.20827

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

In mammalian hearts the capillaries are closely aligned with the muscle fibers. We report our observation of a main‐field direction‐dependent contrast in MR spin‐echo (SE) images of the heart in the presence of Ferumoxtran‐10, an intravascular iron‐oxide nanoparticle contrast agent (CA). We describe a novel MRI method for mapping the preferential orientation of capillaries in the myocardial wall. The eigenvector corresponding to the minimum eigen value of the R~2~ relaxation rate tensor is consistent with the expected orientation of the capillary network. Preliminary results also demonstrate the feasibility of this method for in vivo application to rodent imaging. Magn Reson Med, 2006. Published © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.