Associate professor of mechanical engineering in the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston Li Sun is conducting research to develop contrasting agents to provide color to magnetic resonance imaging by using iron nanostructures.
Sun has received a three-year grant of $300,000 from the National Science Foundation for the research. An earlier seed grant had come from the Alliance for Nanohealth. Other collaborators on the research include Dong Liu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UH, and scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center.
According to Sun, MRIs are in black and white and only help adjust the gray scale. This causes the bright and dark areas to look denser. The iron nanostructures that resemble dumbbells and tubes will help physicians to use multiple colors to identify different tissues. They will also react only to particular magnetic frequencies.
The proteins that will coat the cost- effective nanostructures will respond only to particular cell types including those comprising a ligament or a particular organ in the human body. During lab tests, the agents will be injected into a patient in a liquid. An MRI scan will then be done with a machine programmed at the magnetic frequencies relevant to the nanostructures injected. The machine will allot a color to each nanostructure type. The scans will then be integrated into one image with color codes.
Sun says that individual cells for instance stem cells, could be identified with the nanostrucutures and detected in the human body. A high-frequency magnetic field could be used to heat the nanostructures that respond to cancer cells. This process will destroy the cancer cells without damaging the surrounding healthy cells.
Source: http://www.uh.edu