PURPOSE This study aims to investigate quantitative basal blood flow as well as hypercapnia- and hyperoxia-induced blood flow changes in the retinas of the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rats with spontaneous retinal degeneration, and to compare with those of normal rat retinas. METHODS Experiments were performed on male RCS rats at post-natal days P90 (n=4) and P220 (n=5), and on age-matche...

The liver is one of the most important organs of detoxification in the body. Use of diffusion-weighted (DWI) and dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) 1H MRI for the assessment of hepatic perfusion and diffusion parameters were evaluated in a CCl4-induced rat liver injury model. Acute liver injury was produced by a single gavage of mixture of CCl4 and corn coil. MRI experiments were performed before ...

Background Thyroid and parathyroid are two endocrine glands implicated in regulation of growth and metabolism as well as calcium homeostasis. Thyroid hypertrophy, hyperplasia and neoplasia are spontaneous findings often observed in rats in non-clinical safety studies. Such findings, however, can also be induced by investigational compounds. In order to understand the time of onset, progression ...

Extracellular pH (pHe) decrease is associated with tumor growth, invasion, metastasis, and chemoresistance, which can be detected by chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Here, we demonstrated that ioversol CEST MRI can be exploited to achieve pHe mapping of the liver cancer microenvironment. In in vitro studies, we firstly explored whether ioversol sign...

Introduction. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is an accepted measure of the coil performance and at the same time SNR is an accepted standard for measurement of image quality in MRI, as the quality of the reconstructed image depends strongly on the SNR of the acquired MR signals. Analytical expressions based on the Maxwell equations, can be derived for the simplest cases of surface coils [1], b...

Hyperpolarized Kr surface quadrupolar relaxation (SQUARE) generates MRI contrast that was previously shown to correlate with surface-to-volume ratios in porous model surface systems. The underlying physics of SQUARE contrast is conceptually different from any other current MRI methodology as the method uses the nuclear electric properties of the spin I 1⁄4 9/2 isotope Kr. To explore the usage o...

Introduction Conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the best imaging modality to demonstrate ligamentous injury, hematoma, disk herniation, spinal cord edema and hemorrhage that occur following trauma. Quantitative and qualitative image parameters like lesion length, maximum spinal cord compression, spinal cord swelling and, presence of hemorrhage within the cord has been reported to ...

Hyperpolarized (83)Kr surface quadrupolar relaxation (SQUARE) generates MRI contrast that was previously shown to correlate with surface-to-volume ratios in porous model surface systems. The underlying physics of SQUARE contrast is conceptually different from any other current MRI methodology as the method uses the nuclear electric properties of the spin I = 9/2 isotope (83)Kr. To explore the u...

Development of efficient imaging techniques to trace neuronal connections would be very useful. Manganese ion (Mn2+) is an excellent T1 contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Four reports utilizing radioactive Mn2+ in fish and rat brain indicate that Mn2+ may be useful for tracing neuronal connections. Therefore, the purpose of this work was to determine if Mn2+ can be used as an ...

The use of cells derived from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) for regenerative therapies confers a considerable risk for neoplastic growth and teratoma formation. Preclinical and clinical assessment of such therapies will require suitable monitoring strategies to understand and mitigate these risks. Here we generated human-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), selected clones that continued to ...