Dr. Qun Zhao of the University of Georgia Department of Physics and Astronomy will be presenting his talk entitled, "Enhancement of Magnetic Resonance Imaging using Contrast Agents."

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has been increasingly used in biological/biomedical
research and clinical practices. Despite its wide applications, MRI has been facing challenges of
increasing demand for high sensitivity and specificity. Contrast agents, e.g. superparamagnetic
iron oxides (SPIOs), are excellent candidates for changing properties such as longitudinal and
transversal relaxation time, resulting in a signal contrast change among different types of
materials/tissue in a living body. In this talk, a brief MRI review and the physical principles on
relaxation time will be introduced first. Then, applications in biomedicine/biology are presented
for tumor research including generation of positive contrast mapping using SPIOs for early
detection.