A novel, compact-sized (19 cm × 16 cm) and portable (500 g) magnetic resonance relaxometry system is designed and developed. We overcame several key engineering barriers so that magnetic resonance technology can be potentially used for disease diagnosis-monitoring in point-of-care settings, directly on biological cells and tissues. The whole system consists of a coin-sized permanent magnet (0.76 T), miniaturized radio-frequency microcoil probe, compact lumped-circuit duplexer, and single board 1-W power amplifier, in which a field programmable gate array -based spectrometer is used for pulse excitation, signal acquisition, and data processing. We show that by measuring the proton transverse relaxation rates from a large pool of natural abundance proton-nuclei presence in less than 1 μL of red blood cells, one can indirectly deduce the relative magnetic susceptibility of the bulk cells within a few minutes of signal acquisition time. Such rapid and sensitive blood screening system can be used to monitor the fluctuation of the bulk magnetic susceptibility of the biological cells (e.g., human blood cells), where unusual state of the bulk magnetic susceptibility is related to a number of diseases.
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September 2012
Research Article|
September 26 2012
Development of miniaturized, portable magnetic resonance relaxometry system for point-of-care medical diagnosis
Weng Kung Peng;
Weng Kung Peng
1BioSystems and Micromechanics IRG (BioSyM),
Singapore - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre
, S16-05-08, 3 Science Drive 2, Singapore 117543
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Lan Chen;
Lan Chen
1BioSystems and Micromechanics IRG (BioSyM),
Singapore - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre
, S16-05-08, 3 Science Drive 2, Singapore 117543
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Jongyoon Han
Jongyoon Han
1BioSystems and Micromechanics IRG (BioSyM),
Singapore - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre
, S16-05-08, 3 Science Drive 2, Singapore 1175432Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, 36-841, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA and Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
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Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 095115 (2012)
Article history
Received:
April 09 2012
Accepted:
September 05 2012
Citation
Weng Kung Peng, Lan Chen, Jongyoon Han; Development of miniaturized, portable magnetic resonance relaxometry system for point-of-care medical diagnosis. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 1 September 2012; 83 (9): 095115. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4754296
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