Journal of Visualization

, Volume 18, Issue 4, pp 563–570 | Cite as

3D Visualization of iron oxide nanoparticles in MRI of inflammatory model

Regular Paper
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:

Abstract

Nanomedicine is becoming an extremely promising research area for healthcare. The visualization and quantification of nanoparticles (NPs) inside the organs of interest pose a significant challenge and therefore, novel image processing approaches are required for a better diagnosis. The purpose of this work was to develop a novel approach for better visualization and quantification of iron oxide NPs in three dimension (3D) high-resolution magnetic resonance (MR) images of an inflammatory model. The proposed procedure focuses on the extraction of NPs from the background surrounding it. It is applied on 2D and 3D images and is based on pre-processing and segmentation by automatic threshold to visualize the NPs inside the mouse calf using a control set of images of the same calf before injecting the NPs. The resulting visualization of the 3D distribution of iron oxide NPs inside the inflamed area of the calf has a potential in the advancement of NPs application in nanomedicine therapy and diagnosis.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

MRI image processing Visualization Segmentation Iron oxide nanoparticles Extraction Quantification 

Notes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Science Technology and Innovation plan NSTIP strategic technologies programs, project number 11-MED1773, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We thank Prof. Kelechi Ogbuehi for English editing.

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Copyright information

© The Visualization Society of Japan 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Biomedical Technology, College of Applied Medical SciencesKing Saud UniversityRiyadhSaudi Arabia
  2. 2.Department of Radiological Sciences, College of Applied Medical SciencesKing Saud UniversityRiyadhSaudi Arabia

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