Bimodal TWMPI-MRI Hybrid Scanner—Coil Setup and Electronics

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) was first presented in 2005. It is based on the nonlinear response of ferromagnetic material and the fact that the magnetization saturates at sufficiently high magnetic fields. In contrast to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), MPI directly detects the concentration and distribution of superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles without any background of any tissue. To overcome this issue, a traveling wave MPI (TWMPI) device was combined with a low field MRI scanner to demonstrate the feasibility of a hybrid scanner, which contains both imaging modalities in a single device. The hardware of both separate approaches should be improved and optimized to reach higher fields and a higher resolution, especially for the MRI measurement. Therefore, the dynamic linear gradient array from the TWMPI scanner was modified in a way to produce also a homogenous magnetic field, which can be used for MRI.