Magnetic resonance imaging of oxygen microbubbles

Elinor Thompson; Sean Smart; Paul Kinchesh; Daniel Bulte; Eleanor Stride

Magnetic resonance imaging of oxygen microbubbles

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Author(s): Elinor Thompson¹ ; Sean Smart² ; Paul Kinchesh² ; Daniel Bulte¹ ; Eleanor Stride¹
- Affiliations: 1: Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford , OX3 7DQ , UK ;
  2: Radiobiology Research Institute, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford , OX3 7DQ , UK
Source: Volume 6, Issue 5, October 2019, p. 138 – 142
DOI: 10.1049/htl.2018.5058 , Online ISSN 2053-3713

This is an open access article published by the IET under the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

Received 04/09/2018, Accepted 23/05/2019, Revised 12/04/2019, Published 21/08/2019

Oxygen loaded microbubbles are being investigated as a means of reducing tumour hypoxia in order to improve response to cancer therapy. To optimise this approach, it is desirable to be able to measure changes in tissue oxygenation in real-time during treatment. In this study, the feasibility of using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for this purpose was investigated. Longitudinal relaxation time (T1) measurements were made in simple hydrogel phantoms containing two different concentrations of oxygen microbubbles. T1 was found to be unaffected by the presence of oxygen microbubbles at either concentration. Upon application of ultrasound to destroy the microbubbles, however, a statistically significant reduction in T1 was seen for the higher microbubble concentration. Further work is needed to assess the influence of physiological conditions upon the measurements, but these preliminary results suggest that MRI could provide a method for quantifying the changes in tissue oxygenation produced by microbubbles during therapy.

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