Understanding MRI Contrast Agents

A team at Rice University is investigating nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation in the presence of MRI contrast agent gadolinium (III). The simulations showed good agreement with experiments, without any free parameters in the interpretation of the simulations. The results, however, are a stark contrast to the extended SBM model — the mainstay for interpreting relaxation in MRI.

“Overall, these discoveries open a new way to elucidate how contrast agents respond at human body conditions during an MRI scan,” said Rice chemical and biomolecular engineer Philip Singer  . “By better understanding this, one can develop new, safer and more sensitive contrast agents, as well as use simulations to enhance the interpretation of MRI data.”

Transcript

00:00:01 foreign contrast agents are basically chemical compounds that change the nuclear magnetic resonance response of water hydrogen protons around it so if you imagine for instance gadolinium which is used for contrast agents what happens is that this gatherly new change how the water in our body respond in the MRI scan

00:00:35 [Music] what is unique about our method is that we use accurate molecular dynamic simulations to probe mechanisms of NMR relaxation we don't really assume any relaxation model or have any free parameters in our calculations [Music] we have recently shown the effects of

00:01:12 temperature in the NMR relaxation of gadolinium APA system and we have also been able to decompose the relaxivory signal into molecular modes of relaxation which basically allows us to understand a little bit more about the physics of the phenomena we know that an important part of the contrast contrast effect is due to the inner shell of water strongly bound to this plus 3

00:01:34 catalinium ion and in our work we show that the Dynamics and the residence time of the water in this inertial is greatly affected by temperature I would say that an exciting part about our work is that we were able to validate our simulation data with experiments obtained independently by the team of Professor Steve Greenbaum which is a professor of physics at

00:01:58 Hunter College in the City University of New York and whose team has really an expertise in measuring in the moral activity of contrast agents in various conditions [Music] thank you because contrast agents are basically heliated structures of gadolini which are organic molecules like this one that

00:02:28 embrace the ion in the center such choliated structures will be the object of future studies with the hope of tuning these contrast agents for better performance [Music]