Rahul Lall

About Rahul’s research on magnetic particle imaging instrumentation:

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a magnetics-based imaging approach that can be used to image superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) that are used to selectively tag target cells of interest. MPI benefits from high image contrast due to the near zero background signal of tissue, enabling imaging similar to PET or SPECT without the toxicity presented by radiotracers. Typically, MPI imagers are large, two-sided imaging systems allowing for depth independent imaging, but these systems suffer from technology scalability issues, low sensitivity, and low resolution when moving towards human application. My research focuses on the (1) development of a one-sided handheld magnetic particle imager for intraoperative assessment of remnant cancer and lymph node metastasis, (2) extension of this imaging modality to multicolor image reconstruction, and (3) development of a high sensitivity arbitrary waveform magnetic relaxometer for pulse sequence design in order to maximize imaging resolution.