Tomographic Magnetic Particle Imaging With a Single-Sided Field-Free Line Scanner
Chris McDonough, John Chrisekos, Alexey Tonyushkin
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) is a biomedical imaging modality that shows promise in enhancing clinical imaging capabilities. While there are current efforts to expand MPI hardware to enable whole-body and head imaging, this comes at a significant cost in terms of complexity and expense. METHODS: A single-sided scanner can offer greater accessibility to the scanning area, as all hardware is located on one side of the device's surface, however, at the price of the limited penetration depth. Despite this, a single-sided device could serve as an open geometry preclinical scanner and a clinical instrument for local screening and procedures. The original single-sided device was introduced for a field-free point encoding gradient, which may limit its practical characteristics. RESULTS: We developed a field-free line single-sided device that has improved imaging characteristics, which is beneficial for preclinical applications and potential clinical translation. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated full tomographic imaging capabilities with the prototype of a single-sided MPI scanner and characterized the imaging performance of our imaging system. SIGNIFICANCE: MPI has the potential to image various human body regions, particularly for breast cancer diagnosis. Our research tackles the crucial aspect of scalability in the emerging MPI technique.