Nanoporous hollow fibers as a phantom material for the validation of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an emerging noninvasive imaging modality. In this study, highly aligned, uniform, nanoporous, hollow polycaprolactone fibers were successfully synthesized in a single step to mimic the axon bundle structure in human white matter. Their porous nature, morphology, and physicochemical properties were carefully studied with respect to their suitability as a phantom material for brain imaging. The aligned fibrous bundles were then arranged into specific angles (30 and 90 ), scanned, and evaluated with high-resolution MRI fiber tractography. Diffusion tensor imaging and the tractography of fibers of five different structures at three temperatures were acquired and compared. Furthermore, an integrated brain phantom created from a combination of agar gel and aligned fibrous bundles was also fabricated and analyzed. The results demonstrate the excellent ability of the fibers to mimic the axonal bundles of brain white matter. The fibrous bundles were well mixed in the common agar phantom while retaining their fibrous configuration; this demonstrated their potential as brain white matter phantoms.

The Development and Bio-applications of Multifluid Electrospinning

“…Coaxial electrospinning provides the opportunity to develop diverse nanostructures (see Figure 3a and 3b) with tunable functional performance. Coaxial electrospinning can be used to fabricate core-shell fibers ( Figure 3a) [34,35], or hollow fibers ( Figure 3b) [36][37][38][39]. Such core-shell structures can provide more functions.…”

Recent applications of electrical, centrifugal, and pressurised emerging technologies for fibrous structure engineering in drug delivery, regenerative medicine and theranostics

“…The ever-increasing process understanding in this remit has enabled the ES process to evolve, yielding complex and innovative systems; including coaxial systems containing multiple concentrically arranged needles (yielding multi-layered fibers) [186,[219][220][221][222][223][224][225][226][227][228][229][230][231][232][233] and electrohydrodynamic printing [2,57,142,[234][235][236][237][238][239][240][241]; enabling the fabrication of prepatterned, aligned fibers. An emerging development includes systems utilising a needleless approach; yielding fibers within the nanometer range without the use of a conductive nozzle [242][243][244][245][246][247][248][249][250][251].…”

“…i) SEM image of the cross section of coaxially electrospun hollow PVP and PCL fibers for potential use in diffusion tensor imaging and fiber tracing. Reproduced from [231]. j) Electron micrographs of coaxial electrospun fibers comprising PCL and ketoconazole using 1,2propanediol as a solvent.…”

“…Reproduced from [231]. j) Electron micrographs of coaxial electrospun fibers comprising PCL and ketoconazole using 1,2-propanediol as a solvent.…”

Porous Fiber Processing and Manufacturing for Energy Storage Applications

“…In addition to the surface nanopore generation, electrospinning is also an effective method to make nanoporous hollow fibers. As shown by Zhang et al in [43], coaxial electrospinning was used to make core/shell hollow fibers. The polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer with the biodegradable property was used as the shell of the nanofiber.…”