Magnetic Particle Imaging

Candidate—Patrick Goodwill, UC Berkeley

Nominated by Steven Conolly, UC Berkeley

The Deloitte QB3 Award for Innovation recognizes a graduate student, postdoc, staff scientist, or team from UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, or UCSF who has made an advance with the capacity to improve human health. Candidates for were nominated by QB3 faculty. Finalists were chosen by a panel of expert judges.

We asked each nominee (or team) to answer a series of short questions, to give a snapshot of their project. Read their answers below. Leave a comment to let us know what you think!

Patrick Goodwill.

Please describe your innovation.
I developed the theory and scanners for X-space Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI), a new medical imaging technique that will revolutionize diagnostic imaging. X-space MPI will enable real-time angiography without radiation or iodine, as well as cancer detection using dynamic contrast enhancement. X-space MPI theory describes how a combination of strong magnetic field gradients and time varying magnetic fields can produce an image of the concentration of an iron oxide tracer in the body. The theory has been the foundation for my construction of three generations of X-space MPI scanners, the latest of which recently acquired our first animal images.

Within the 140-character Twitter limit:

What’s the impact?
MPI enables radiation-free, iodine-free, non-invasive assessment of cardiovascular health, the leading cause of death in the US

What’s the novelty?
MPI is the first whole-body imaging tech to see a radiation-free tracer w/ perfect contrast, giving doctors a powerful new diagnostic tool

What’s the utility?
MPI has a clear path to the clinic. My latest (of three) MPI scanners can image rats, and I am now beginning to plan a human scanner

The latest version of the scanner, with a mouse loaded for imaging.

How does your research topic represent a strong advance in human health? And how will it influence the way we operate in science in the future?
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. MPI will save lives by giving doctors a way to assess cardiovascular health in real-time without the dangers of radiation and Iodine inherent to the clinically dominant X-ray techniques. MPI will also give scientists and health professionals a way to non-invasively study the body. MPI sees only an iron-oxide tracer and does not see tissue, and so MPI contrast is comparable to nuclear imaging. Therefore MPI could prove a radiation-free means to track tagged cells such as stem cells homing to an injury or monocytes seeking out an infection.

References:
Narrowband Magnetic Particle Imaging
Patrick W. Goodwill, Greig C. Scott, Pascal P. Stang, and Steven M. Conolly
IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, Vol. 28, No. 8, August 2009

The X-Space Formulation of the Magnetic Particle Imaging Process—1-D Signal, Resolution, Bandwidth, SNR, SAR, and Magnetostimulation
Patrick W. Goodwill and Steven M. Conolly
IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, Vol. 29, No. 11, November 2010