Development of a human-size magnetic particle imaging device for sentinel lymph node biopsy of breast cancer

Shi Bai; Lingke Gai; Qinyang Zhang; Yue Kang; Zhiyao Liu; Yuan He; Wenzhong Liu; Tao Jiang; Zhongzhou Du; Siyao Du; Si Gao; Min Zhang; Tianshu Li

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2024.1327521

Development of a human-size magnetic particle imaging device for sentinel lymph node biopsy of breast cancer

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2024 Feb 13:12:1327521. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1327521. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Shi Bai^{1

2}, Lingke Gai¹, Qinyang Zhang¹, Yue Kang³, Zhiyao Liu¹, Yuan He^{1

4}, Wenzhong Liu⁵, Tao Jiang⁶, Zhongzhou Du⁷, Siyao Du⁸, Si Gao⁸, Min Zhang⁸, Tianshu Li¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Information Science and Engineering, Shenyang University of Technology, Shenyang, China.
² Liaoning Magnetic Medical Sensing and Treatment Technological Innovation Center, Liaoning Jiayin Medical Technology Co., Ltd., Shenyang, China.
³ Department of Breast Surgery, Cancer Hospital of Dalian University of Technology, Cancer Hospital of China Medical University, Liaoning Cancer Hospital & Institute, Shenyang, China.
⁴ Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan.
⁵ School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
⁶ School of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
⁷ Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Zhengzhou, China.
⁸ First Affiliated Hospital, China Medical University, Shenyang, China.

Abstract

In this study, a novel human-size handheld magnetic particle imaging (MPI) system was developed for the high-precision detection of sentinel lymph nodes for breast cancer. The system consisted of a highly sensitive home-made MPI detection probe, a set of concentric coils pair for spatialization, a solenoid coil for uniform excitation at 8 kHz@1.5 mT, and a full mirrored coil set positioned far away from the scanning area. The mirrored coils formed an extremely effective differential pickup structure which suppressed the system noise as high as 100 dB. The different combination of the inner and outer gradient current made the field free point (FFP) move in the Z direction with a uniform intensity of 0.54T/m, while the scanning in the XY direction was implemented mechanically. The third-harmonic signal of the Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (SPIONs) at the FFP was detected and then reconstructed synchronously with the current changes. Experiment results showed that the tomographic detection limit was 30 mm in the Z direction, and the sensitivity was about 10 μg Fe SPIONs at 40 mm distance with a spatial resolution of about 5 mm. In the rat experiment, 54 μg intramuscular injected SPIONs were detected successfully in the sentinel lymph node, in which the tracer content was about 1.2% total injected Fe. Additionally, the effective detection time window was confirmed from 4 to 6 min after injection. Relevant clinical ethics are already in the application process. Large mammalian SLNB MPI experiments and 3D preoperative SLNB imaging will be performed in the future.

Keywords: SPIONs; field free point; human-sized MPI; sentinel lymph node biopsy; third-harmonic signal.

Grants and funding

The authors declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 62001313), the Key Project of Liaoning Provincial Department of Science and Technology (Grant Nos 2021JH2/10300134 and 2022JH1/10500004), the Liaoning Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 2022-YGJC-11, 2022-YGJC-29, and 2022-YGJC-35), the Key Project of Liaoning Provincial Department of Education (Grant No. LJKZ0133), and the Science and Technology Project of Shenyang City (Grant No. 22-321-32-09).