Contrast agents are of great importance in clinical applications of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to improve the contrast of internal body structures and to obtain tissue-specific image. However, current approved contrast agents still have limitations including low relaxivity, low specificity and uncontrolled blood circulation time, which motivated researchers to develop novel contrast agents with higher relaxivity, improved targeting abilities and optimal retention time. This thesis uses animal experimental data from Dr. Jenny J. Yang’s lab at the Department of Chemistry in Georgia State University to study effects of a class of newly designed protein-based MRI contrast agents (ProCAs). Models for the longitudinal data on MRI intensity are constructed to evaluate the efficiency of different MRI contrast agents. Statistically significant results suggest that ProCA1B14 has the great potential to be a tumor specific contrast agent and ProCA32 could be a promising MRI contrast agent for the liver imaging in clinical applications.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GEORGIA/oai:scholarworks.gsu.edu:math_theses-1141 |
| Date | 12 August 2014 |
| Creators | Qian, Yan |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University |
| Source Sets | Georgia State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Mathematics Theses |
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