Temperature-Dependent Changes in Resolution and Coercivity of Superparamagnetic and Superferromagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

Abstract

Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) is a tracer-based imaging modality with immense promise as a radiation-free alternative to nuclear medicine imaging techniques. Nuclear medicine requires "hot chemistry" wherein radioactive tracers must be synthesized on-site, requiring expensive infrastructure and labor costs. MPI's magnetic nanoparticles, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIOs), have no significant signal decay over time which removes cost barriers associated with nuclear medicine studies such as FDG-PET. While SPIOs are the current industry standard MPI tracer, recent developments in synthesizing superferromagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SFMIOs) and high resolution SPIOs (HR-SPIOs), a new class of nanoparticle with almost zero coercivity, have yielded a 30-fold improvement in resolution (0.4 mT) and SNR. To better understand the long-term performance of these new nanoparticles, this investigation reports changes in SPIO (VivoTrax Plus), HR-SPIO, and SFMIO resolution, along with SFMIO coercivity, at low temperatures (-2, 2 °C) and room temperature (18-22 °C) over 12 weeks. We find that changes in HR-SPIO resolution are more sensitive to storage temperature than SFMIOs. Additionally, we observe no appreciable difference in SFMIO coercivity between the two temperatures over time. These results can inform research on optimizing tracer synthesis while lending practical information to future hospitals about the highly accessible conditions for the transit and storage of tracers.