Study of the Incorporation of metabolic molecules into calcite for the improvement of Metabolic Magnetic Resonance imaging of tumors

The use of metabolic MRI has many clinical advantages and especially in identifying tumours at an early stage. However, the difficulty in obtaining a strong enough magnetic signal impedes its common use. For this MRI technique to work one needs to take advantage of the polarization of a metabolite which is unfortunately naturally only 1ppm. Here we propose to overcome this limitation by "conjugating" the desired metabolite with an inorganic mineral, in which the polarized state exhibits a relatively long relaxation time, and thus may serve as a spin reservoir and, via the process of spin diffusion, elongate the relaxation time of the metabolite. Hench, incorporating metabolites such as pyruvate into the lattice of a crystal should allow a much longer relaxation time and could potentially allow much longer and better imaging. Herein we will study the effect of incorporation of metabolites into the calcite on its lattice (ID22) and correlate it with polarization relaxations.