Event Details
Imaging with Hyperpolarized Xenon Gas
Speaker: Tamara Branca, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Department: Electrical Engineering
Location: Engineering Quadrangle J201
Date/Time: Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
A steadily increasing range of applications have been found for nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy with hyperpolarized gas.
Several orders of magnitude enhancement of the nuclear spin polarization of the gas allows us not only to highlight void spaces, such as the lungs, but also to achieve cellular and molecular contrast of soft tissue.
In this talk I will cover the basics of magnetic resonance with hyperpolarized gases, and show some of the recent results obtained in our lab.
In particular I will show how the specificity and sensitivity of hyperpolarized gas can be enhanced by magnetic nanoprobes to detect cancer metastases in the lungs, and how hyperpolarized gas can be used to directly detect cellular structure and thermogenic activity of brown adipose tissue, a tissue whose malfunction is implicated in the onset of obesity.
