Visualization of USPIO-labeled melt-electrowritten scaffolds by non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging.

Melt electrowriting (MEW) is a high-resolution fiber-forming technology for the digital fabrication of complex micro-structured scaffolds for tissue engineering, which has convincingly shown its potential in in vitro and in vivo animal studies. The clinical translation of such constructs to the patient requires the capability to visualize them upon implantation with clinically accepted methods such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). To this end, this work presents the modification of polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffolds with ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide (USPIO) nanoparticles to render them visualizable by MRI.