A multimodal contrast agent for simultaneous magnetic resonance and optical imaging of small animal

Abstract

Our goal is to assess the feasibility of a bi-functional contrast agent that is intravenously injected to an R3230 induced small animal breast tumor model. The MR/optical contrast agent was produced by GE Global Research, NY. We used a combined frequency domain diffuse optical tomography (DOT) and a 4T magnetic resonance (MR) scanner to simultaneously measure the kinetics of the contrast agent in vivo. Both systems detected the signal change in the tumor and the non-tumor region. MR measurements served as a gold standard to validate the optical kinetics. We present both MR and DOT dynamic curves as well as the reconstructed optical absorption maps.