Fast Field Cycling Project

In the field of Biomedical Imaging, INVENTO is carrying out a project with the Department of Physics of the University of Aberdeen, Oxford Instruments and Tesla engineering. The project is aimed at attaining a New MRI Method, based on the comparison of images taken at two different Magnetic Field strengths. Deliberately switching the magnetic field during the collection of magnetic resonance images, we will obtain new types of endogenous tissue contrast, and will also greatly improve the effectiveness of contrast-enhanced MRI, by designing tailored contrast agents. We will design contrast agents that exhibit significant variation in relaxivity over the range of magnetic fields that will be accessible to our FFC-MRI instruments (zero to 0.5 tesla).

The Fields that are chosen for the detection are dictated by the characteristics of a given Contrast Agents. Such a contrast agent could be “switched on” post-injection by collecting an FFC-MRI image at an evolution field where the relaxivity is maximum, and “switched off” by repeating the scan at an evolution field corresponding to a minimum in relaxivity. The effect of the Contrast Agent in this procedure (MRI images) is much higher than the effect of the same agent (at the same concentration) when the image is taken at a single magnetic field (as done by all the currently available instruments).