Transition-Metal Contrast Agents for MRI

Dear Colleagues,

MRI contrast agents are routinely used in MRI examinations for diagnosis in the clinic and are essential to modern diagnostic techniques. By far, the majority of these agents are coordination complexes of Gd(III), which exhibit high magnetic susceptibility and impart contrast by enhancing the relaxation rate of surrounding water protons. However, growing safety concerns over the use of lanthanide-based contrast agents have led the drive to find alternatives to gadolinium-based MRI agents due to links with nephrogenic systemic fibrosis and reports of Gd(III) retention in the brains and bone of patients receiving multiple doses.

One approach is to look to endogenous transition metal ions as alternatives. Several strategies can be used to achieve contrast in proton MRI using transition metal ions, including conventional relaxivity agents, which exploit paramagnetic relaxation enhancement, and paraSHIFT agents, for which paramagnetic hyperfine shifts are induced by anisotropic magnetic susceptibility. Spin changes can be induced with an external stimulus using transition metal chemistry in pursuit of switchable contrast agents for imaging biochemical processes. This Special Issue of Applied Sciences aims to publish a collection of research contributions of recent work in the development, study, and understanding of transition metal contrast agents for MRI.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Magnetochemistry.

Prof. Dr. Janet R. Morrow
Dr. Nicola J. Rogers
Guest Editors

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• magnetic resonance imaging
• contrast agents
• relaxivity
• paraSHIFT
• paraCEST
• transition metal ions