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Gadolinium

Dr Jeremy Jones and Dr Usman Bashir et al.

Gadolinium (Gd) chelates are paramagnetic agents that are injected intravenously during MR imaging.

Gd molecules shorten spin-lattice relaxation time (T1) of voxels in which they are present. As a result, on T1-weighted images they have a brighter signal. This can have a number of utilities:

detection of focal lesions, i.e. tumour, abscess, metastasis
imaging of vessels in MR angiography
characterization of liver lesions, e.g. hepatoma, haemangioma, based on enhancement characteristics

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References

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1. Gandhi SN, Brown MA, Wong JG et-al. MR contrast agents for liver imaging: what, when, how. Radiographics. 26 (6): 1621-36. doi:10.1148/rg.266065014 - Pubmed citation