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A medical imaging technique based on a new method for transferring magnetic spin could potentially reveal biological processes in the body without exposing patients to harmful radiation .

This is the goal of a GSK-supported research programme at York University, where engineers have developed a way for transferring the magnetic spin from parahydrogen, a molecule most notably used for fuelling the space shuttle.

The team has taken parahydrogen and, through a reversible interaction with a specially designed molecular scaffold, transferred its magnetism to a range of molecules.

If this were applied to magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI ), it could potentially increase sensitivity a thousandfold by giving scanners the ability to detect more molecules in the body than what was previously possible.

Much of this technology is currently possible with nuclear medicine imaging techniques such as Positron emission tomography ( PET ). With this method, a patient would be injected with a radioactive ‘tracer’ material that mimics a biologically active molecule in the body, such as glucose. A PET system would be able to visualise whether the glucose was being metabolised by a tumour, for example, by detecting pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by the tracer.

With MRI , images of organs and tissues in the body are generated using radio waves to create changes in the magnetic field of hydrogen atoms in a sample being examined. Often, these scans require magnetic contrast agents such as gadolinium. While not as harmful as the tracer agents used in PET , the magnetic contrast agents are heavy metal materials that can cause some health effects.

According to Duckett, the new technique would, potentially, require that patients are only injected with contrast material endogenous to the body, such as amino acids.

Source: theEnGineeR

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