Data Publication

Dataset - Nanoparticulated Bimodal Contrast Agent for Ultra-High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectral X-ray Computed Tomography

González-Mancebo, Daniel | Becerro, Ana Isabel | Caro, Carlos | Gómez-González, Elisabet | García-Martín, María L. | Ocaña, Manuel

DIGITAL.CSIC

Bimodal medical imaging based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) is a well-known strategy to increase diagnostic accuracy. The most recent advances in MRI and CT instrumentation are related to the use of ultrahigh magnetic fields (UHF-MRI) and different working voltages (spectral CT), respectively. Such advances require the parallel development of bimodal contrast agents (CAs) that are efficient under the new instrumental conditions. In this work, we have synthesized, through a precipitation reaction from a glycerol solution of the precursors, uniform barium dysprosium fluoride nanospheres with cubic fluorite structure, whose size was found to depend on the Ba/(Ba+Dy) ratio of the starting solution. Moreover, irrespective of the starting Ba/(Ba+Dy) ratio, the experimental Ba/(Ba+Dy) values were always lower than those used in the starting solutions. This result was assigned to a lower precipitation kinetics of barium fluoride compared to dysprosium fluoride, as inferred from the detailed analysis of the effect of reaction time on the chemical composition of the precipitates. A sample composed of 34 nm nanospheres with a Ba0.51Dy0.49F2.49 stoichiometry, showed a transversal relaxivity (r2) value of 147.11 mM-1·s-1 at 9.4 T and gave a high negative contrast in the phantom image. Likewise, it produced high X-ray attenuation in a large range of working voltages (from 80 KVp to 140 KVp), which can be attributed to the presence of different K-edge values, high Z elements (Ba and Dy) in the nanospheres. Finally, these nanospheres showed negligible cytotoxicity for different biocompatibility tests. Taken together, these results show that the reported nanoparticles (NPs) are excellent candidates as UHF MRI/Spectral CT bimodal imaging CAs.

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