System Characterization of a Highly Integrated Preclinical Hybrid MPI-MRI Scanner.

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a novel tracer-based in vivo imaging modality allowing quantitative measurements of the spatial distributions of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles in three dimensions (3D) and in real time using electromagnetic fields. However, MPI lacks the detection of morphological information which makes it difficult to unambiguously assign spatial SPIO distributions to actual organ structures. To compensate for this, a preclinical highly integrated hybrid system combining MPI and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has been designed and gets characterized in this work.