Longitudinal and Transverse Relaxivity Analysis of Native Ferritin and Magnetoferritin at 7 T MRI

• Main Authors: Oliver Strbak, Lucia Balejcikova, Martina Kmetova, Jan Gombos, Jozef Kovac, Dusan Dobrota, Peter Kopcansky
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
• Series: International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Subjects: native ferritin; magnetoferritin; loading factor; MRI; relaxation; longitudinal and transverse relaxivity
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/16/8487

Magnetite mineralization in human tissue is associated with various pathological processes, especially neurodegenerative disorders. Ferritin’s mineral core is believed to be a precursor of magnetite mineralization. Magnetoferritin (MF) was prepared with different iron loading factors (<i>LFs</i>) as a model system for pathological ferritin to analyze its MRI relaxivity properties compared to those of native ferritin (NF). The results revealed that MF differs statistically significantly from NF, with the same <i>LF</i>, for all studied relaxation parameters at 7 T: <i>r</i>₁, <i>r</i>₂, <i>r</i>₂<i>*</i>, <i>r</i>₂<i>/r</i>₁, <i>r</i>₂<i>*/r</i>₁. Distinguishability of MF from NF may be useful in non-invasive MRI diagnosis of pathological processes associated with iron accumulation and magnetite mineralization (e.g., neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, and diseases of the heart, lung and liver). In addition, it was found that MF samples possess very strong correlation and MF’s relaxivity is linearly dependent on the <i>LF</i>, and the transverse and longitudinal ratios <i>r</i>₂<i>/r</i>₁ and <i>r</i>₂<i>*/r</i>₁ possess complementary information. This is useful in eliminating false-positive hypointensive artefacts and diagnosis of the different stages of pathology. These findings could contribute to the exploitation of MRI techniques in the non-invasive diagnosis of iron-related pathological processes in human tissue.