Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI): Experimental Quantification of Vascular Stenosis Using Stationary Stenosis Phantoms

Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) is able to provide high temporal and good spatial resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio and sensitivity. Furthermore, it is a truly quantitative method as its signal strength is proportional to the concentration of its tracer, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIOs). Because of that, MPI is proposed to be a promising future method for cardiovascular imaging. Here, an interesting application may be the quantification of vascular pathologies like stenosis by utilizing the proportionality of the SPIO concentration and the MPI signal strength. In this study, the feasibility of MPI based stenosis quantification is evaluated based on this application scenario. Nine different stenosis phantoms with a normal diameter of 10 mm each and different stenoses of 1–9 mm and ten reference phantoms with a straight diameter of 1–10 mm were filled with a 1% Resovist dilution and measured in a preclinical MPI-demonstrator. The MPI signal intensities of the reference phantoms were compared to each other and the change of signal intensity within each stenosis phantom was used to calculate the degree of stenosis. These values were then compared to the known diameters of each phantom. As a second measurement, the 5 mm stenosis phantom was used for a serial dilution measurement down to a Resovist dilution of 1:3200 (0.031%), which is lower than a first pass blood concentration of a Resovist bolus in the peripheral arteries of an average adult human of at least about 1:1000. The correlation of the stenosis values based on MPI signal intensity measurements and based on the known diameters showed a very good agreement, proving the high precision of quantitative MPI in this regard.