Traveling wave MPI goes pre-clinical application

A young tomographic imaging method is growing up: since the first publication of magnetic particle imaging (MPI) different hardware designs and scanner concepts have been shown, furthermore multiple studies on optimizing magnetic tracer materials have been published. The next step on the way to the clinical routine is the preclinical testing phase. Being a radiation-free imaging method MPI provides a very fast and sensitive scanner concept similar to PET or SPECT, but also relies on the anatomical background information obtained by MRI or CT. Functionalizing magnetic tracer materials might offer new insights into the pathogenesis of diseases and complex immune processes. In this paper, first results of pre-clinical tests are presented to investigate the suitability of MPI for disease models. Localizing antibody-labeled T cells in the organism using targeted SPIONs demonstrates the suitability of the MPI method to visualize immune processes in a murine GVHD model. With these results the way is paved for investigating further disease models.