Iron-Based Ionic Liquids for Magnetic Resonance Imaging Application

In the biomedical treatment, identification of diseases and their diagnosis are running with help of many biomedical techniques including imaging such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI technique requires an identification of targeted cell or lesion area which can be achieved by contrast agent. For clinical use, T1 positive MRI contrast agents and T2 negative MRI contrast agents are being used. However, these contrast agents have several drawbacks such as toxic effect of metal centre, poor resolution, weak contrast, low intensity image and short signal for long-term in vivo measurement. Therefore, development of new contrast agents is imperative. Ionic liquids with their unique properties have been tried as novel contrasting materials. Particularly, iron-containing amino-acid-based ionic liquids or amino-acid-based paramagnetic ionic liquids (PMILs) have been reported and demonstrated as MRI contrast agents. These PMILs have shown superior features over reported contrast agents such as dual-mode contrast, biofriendly nature, involvement of non-toxic magnetic centre (Fe), stable aqueous solution, better image intensity at low concentration level and easy to synthesis. PMILs have been characterized well and studied with animal DNA using various techniques. The result revealed that animal DNA is remain safe and stable structurally up to 5 mmol.l−1. These cost-effective PMILs opened the greater opportunity in the field of contrast-based biomedical applications.