Fluorinated MRI Contrast Agents and Their Versatile Applications in the Biomedical Field

Abstract

MRI has been recognized as one of the most applied medical imaging techniques in clinical practice. However, the presence of background signal coming from water protons in surrounding tissues makes sometimes the visualization of local contrast agents difficult. To remedy this, fluorine has been introduced as a reliable perspective, thanks to its magnetic properties being relatively close to those of protons. In this review, we aim to give an overall description of fluorine incorporation in contrast agents for MRI. The different kinds of fluorinated probes such as perfluorocarbons, fluorinated dendrimers, polymers and paramagnetic probes will be described, as will their imaging applications such as chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) imaging, physico-chemical changes detection, drug delivery, cell tracking and inflammation or tumors detection.

19F MRI Nanotheranostics for Cancer Management: Progress and Prospects

“…In addition to the above nanosystems, other polymer‐based nanosystems with adjustable fluorine content and MRI properties, in which the fluorine portion is physically encapsulated or chemically attached to the polymer skeleton, have also been developed, with a wide range of biomedical applications (Table 3). The systematic reviews of Hequet et al [97] . and Jirak et al [98] .…”

Nanotechnology as a Versatile Tool for 19F-MRI Agent’s Formulation: A Glimpse into the Use of Perfluorinated and Fluorinated Compounds in Nanoparticles

“…There are some excellently written reviews for further reference on PFCs used for oxygen delivery [55,63,73,124,[161][162][163][164], imaging inflammation [48,91,165,166], and cell tracking [65,98,129,[167][168][169]. Refer to the reviews for profound understanding on 19 F MRI used in biomedicine [44,47,56,[170][171][172], PFCs used for various applications [53,74,84,89,[173][174][175][176] and fluorinated compounds including PFCs used for imaging and/or drug delivery [17,24,54,[177][178][179][180][181][182][183]. Being in the tight grip of SARS-CoV-2, PFCs have been proposed as a source of gas exchange in patients in critical conditions and be employed to protect blood cells [184].…”

Magnetic Nanomaterials as Contrast Agents for MRI

“…An alternative to the common MRI scan is fluorine (F) magnetic resonance imaging. One of the major drawbacks of common MRI is the presence of noisy signals that arise from the proton nuclei situated in vicinity of the region of interest; in this context, fluorine has been considered a viable alternative, as it possesses adequate magnetic features compared to protons [ 107 ]. Despite the advantages of 19-F MRI, in order to reach a satisfactory resolution of the image, a greater amount of contrast enhancing agents has to be employed (from 10 to 50 mM) than with Gd complexes, which are able to generate detectable signals at considerably lower concentrations (0.1 µM) [ 108 ].…”