Research focus
The principal limitation of hyperpolarized imaging relates to the short half-life of the polarization, which is typically between 20-40 s in vivo. Therefore, the instrumentation needs to be improved in order to increase their efficiency and sensitivity, so the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the whole system can be maximized.
The aim of this project is to develop a superconducting probe array for 13C imaging of hyperpolarized agents, in order to investigate the limit of acceleration that can be reached just with the improvement of this part of the system. For that purpose, we will implement the acceleration technique of parallel imaging, with minimal noise contribution due to the use of superconducting materials.
The technique of parallel imaging is already commonly used in regular 1H MRI, where several probes transmit simultaneously and later (by signal processing) the received signals are separated in such a way that several images of the same sample can be obtained at the same instant. However, for 13C imaging the signal intensity is several orders of magnitude lower, so the engineering challenge in order to capture and separate the received signals is much higher.
The improved instrumentation would offer doctors and biologists a much broader range of bioprobes for diagnosis and characterization of disease.
Scientific output
Find Juan's publications at DTU's online research database ORBIT.
Funding
The project is funded by the The Danish Council for Independent Research, Technology and Production Sciences as part of the project Highly Efficient Cryogenic Resonators for Magnetic Resonance and Dynamic Nuclear Polarisation (DFF – 4005-00531B) . The project is part of the HYPERMAG Center of Excellence funded by Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF124).
Project Period
December 2014 - November 2018.