Comparison of the ${^{1}{\rm H}}$ NMR Relaxation Enhancement Produced by Bacterial Magnetosomes and Synthetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles for Potential Use as MR Molecular Probes

Iron oxide nanoparticle, named synthetic magnetite, as contrast agent has been widely used in clinical MRI. Recently, a new magnetite nanocrystal, called magnetosome, has been found in magnetotactic bacteria. Physicochemical and magnetorelaxo-metric characterization of bacteria magnetosomes and iron oxide nanoparticles are investigated. Bacterial magnetosomes have the larger mean aggregate size, better dispersion and obviously stronger ferromagnetism compared to synthetic magnetites. The samples of several concentrations of magnetic nanoparticles were analyzed using a clinical 3.0 T MR-scanner. The signal decay in the Magnetic Resonance images is found to change proportionally to the nanoparticles concentration. Two kinds of nanoparticles can be though as a negative contrast agent and show slight effects on T
₁
, but strong effects on T
₂
weighted images. Notice that at the same concentration the signal attenuation of bacterial magnetite samples is more obvious than that of synthetic magnetite samples.