A Facile Method of Preparation of Polymer-Stabilized Perfluorocarbon Nanoparticles with Enhanced Contrast for Molecular Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Abstract

We present a new efficient method of incorporation of gadolinium chelates into polymeric shell surrounding liquid nanoparticles of perfluorotributylamine, which does not degrade the particles stability. The payload reaches ca. 105 Gd ions per nanoparticle giving large local concentration of contrast agent. The relaxivity of Gd-loaded nanoparticles estimated by magnetic resonance imaging at 7 T magnetic field is as high as 105–106 mM−1 s−1. These nanoparticles are promising for dual-mode imaging simultaneously on two nuclei 1H and 19F, thus enhancing the quality of visualization.