ABSTRACT
While magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging of fluorine (19F) nuclei have been pursued for medical research for decades, the simultaneous combination of 1H and 19F MRI has opened up new opportunities for the application of multi-nuclear techniques in the context of molecular and cellular imaging for diagnosis or therapy delivery. The applications of 19F/1H MRI rely heavily on the development of novel fluorinated contrast agents and imaging methodologies. Currently, perfluorocarbon (PFC) nanoparticle (NP) based contrast agents have been applied extensively in several key areas of diagnostic imaging because of their biological safety, versatile chemical properties, and high 19F content [1]. The massive quantities of 19F nuclei per NP may allow much higher detection sensitivity as compared to imaging agents based on fluorinated chemical compounds, which typically contain fewer number of 19F nuclei per molecule. The enthusiasm
for 19F imaging of PFC NP is focused mainly in the fields of cell labeling [2-4, 12-14], targeted molecular imaging [5, 6, 11], and blood pool functional imaging [7, 8]; all of these techniques have been validated extensively in animal models, with some entering human clinical trials.
