Cross-calibration of X-ray µCT and MRX for tissue analysis

Ferrofluids are being considered as an aid for local cancer treatments, such as Magnetic Drug Targeting (MDT) and Magnetic Hyperthermia (MHT). Both methods make use of the strong influence of a magnetic field on the nanoparticles, with the aim of treating the cancer locally while reducing, or even eliminating, the side effects that usually occur during conventional cancer treatments. Microcomputed tomography analysis has been performed on tumour tissue after MDT and MHT in order to examine the distribution of the magnetic nanoparticles within the tissue. The majority of the measurements has been performed in a laboratory based on a polychromatic X-ray source. The strong energy dependence of the attenuation coefficient and the occurrence of the so called beam hardening artefacts make the quantitative evaluation of data acquired with polychromatic tomography equipment very difficult. In this paper we present a cross-calibration method for magnetorelaxometry and polychromatic X-ray tomography for biological tissue samples enriched with magnetic nanoparticles. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)