Figure 4

Molecular imaging of tissue factor expression on cultured smooth muscle cells. Cell cultures were incubated with tissue factor targeted nanoparticles (T), nontargeted nanoparticles (NT) or no nanoparticles (UT). Left: Spin-echo images of smooth muscle cell monolayers acquired at 1.5T reveal image enhancement for the well treated with targeted particles, but not the wells receiving nontargeted or no nanoparticles. Right: A maximum intensity projection through the 3 D stack of T1-weighted images acquired parallel to the cell monolayers demonstrates the sensitivity of this targeting method for detecting labeled cells. Reprinted with permission from Morawski, et al [74].