Characterizing Tumour Vessels using MRI and Histology - A novel dual injection MR protocol to study tumour blood vessel permeability

• Main Author: Moosvi, Firas
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7804

Galbumin, an MR contrast agent is characterized for use in a new class of animal MR experiments. It’s suitability as both a T1 and T2 agent was assessed and it was found that although Galbumin’s relaxivity (4.33 to 5.77 (mM · sec)−1 was comparable to Gd-DTPA, the solution was not available at a high enough concentration to achieve similar T1 weighted effects. Further, it was deemed an unworthy candidate for T2 -weighted imaging as it’s magnetic susceptibility was much too low (2.95 ppm/mM). Finally, we established a theoretical basis for a novel dual contrast agent MR protocol to investigate blood vessel permeability, extracted from previously published work [1] on modelling MR contrast agents. The over-arching goal of this study is to use the live imaging capabilities of MR combined with traditional immunohistochemical techniques to more accurately characterize tumour vessel permeability.