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The European Congress of Radiology ( ECR 2011 ) is the annual meeting of the European Society of Radiology (ESR), it will be held on March 03 – March 07, 2011 in Austria Center, Vienna, Austria. Molecular imaging has been driven on one hand by PET  SPECT and optical imaging technologies, which allow the detection of molecular targets with exceedingly high sensitivity, and on the other hand by MR with its ability to monitor tissue morphology, function, physiology and metabolism. Researchers have long been focusing on improving MR’s sensitivity and imaging speed to fully exploit its tremendous potential. With powerful MR scans, radiologists can assess many pathologies including neurodegenerative and small vessel diseases much earlier and more effectively. A panel of experts will review the recent progress, both technical and chemical, made in the field, and discuss the necessary choices for future MR scans today at ECR.

Improving sensitivity has been an essential issue in MRI. This can notably be achieved by increasing field strength. Ultra-high-field MRI with field strengths of 7T and above is starting to reveal insights into tissue microstructure that has so far been inaccessible to MR or any other modality.

Pushing field strength still represents a considerable challenge and raises key issues concerning safety, radiofrequency penetration and susceptibility artefacts. 7T MRI leads to totally different areas of applications, which still need to be developed for a clinical setting. But the potential is here, according to Professor Jürgen Hennig, Chairman and Scientific Director of the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at Freiburg University Medical Center

“Although definite clinical studies for a ‘killer application’ are still lacking, the unique contrast and resolution provided by 7T are promising for highly relevant applications such as diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease, small vessel disease, and multiple sclerosis, as well as in treatment planning in oncology,” he said.

Increasing field strength is not the only way to improve sensitivity. Recently, radiofrequency coil arrays have appeared as a powerful means to improve signal-to-noise ratio and accelerate the spatial encoding process, even overcoming some of the pitfalls of high-field MRI. 

Finally, high sensitivity MRI probes have been successfully designed and tested for molecular imaging applications.

“Recent animal experiments have shown an extremely high sensitivity of cryo-cooled probes for cellular imaging, resulting in single cell sensitivity. This is very promising for the role of MRI in molecular imaging,” said session moderator Professor Olivier Clément, radiologist at the European Hospital Georges Pompidou in  Paris and director of the Laboratory of Imaging Research at Paris Descartes University. 

Contrast agents have become increasingly relevant in sharpening MR capacities. 13C-hyperpolarisation of metabolites such as pyruvate, succinate, bicarbonate, etc., leads to an increase in detection sensitivity by factors of 10,000 to 100,000, according to Hennig. Furthermore, newly developed PET/MR systems are  becoming available, combining the best of both worlds – the high sensitivity of PET and the superior image quality and multiparametric contrast of MR – in a single measurement session. 

“The development of targeted probes is progressing extremely rapidly, and for all imaging modalities. Most of this work is aimed at preclinical research, but the tremendous impact of the new insights in translational research promises to be highly significant for clinical application,” Hennig said.

The improvement of image quality, contrast and sensitivity in imaging, and MR especially, goes hand-in-hand with cooperating more closely with partner disciplines. Hybrid imaging using nuclear contrast agents or nanotechnology will play a prominent role in the future.

Source: ECR