# Imaging of Thromboinflammation by Multispectral 19F MRI

## TL;DR

This paper reviews how multispectral 19F MRI can noninvasively image both thrombotic and inflammatory processes, offering a new way to study thromboinflammation in diseases.

## Contribution

The paper introduces the use of multispectral 19F MRI to simultaneously visualize thrombi and immune cells with distinct spectral signatures.

## Key findings

- Multispectral 19F MRI can distinguish immune cells and thrombus components using unique 19F tracer signatures.
- 19F MRI allows quantification of signals and precise anatomical localization when merged with 1H MRI.
- A study demonstrated the feasibility of imaging thromboinflammation using this technique.

## Abstract

The close interplay between thrombotic and immunologic processes plays an important physiological role in the immune defence after tissue injury and has the aim to reduce damage and to prevent the spread of invading pathogens. However, the uncontrolled or exaggerated activation of these processes can lead to pathological thromboinflammation. Thromboinflammation has been shown to worsen the outcome of cardiovascular, autoinflammatory, or even infectious diseases. Imaging of thromboinflammation is difficult because many clinically relevant imaging techniques can only visualize either inflammatory or thrombotic processes. One interesting option for the noninvasive imaging of thromboinflammation is multispectral 19F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Due to the large chemical shift range of the 19F atoms, it is possible to simultaneously visualize immune cells as well as thrombus components with specific 19F tracer that have individual spectral 19F signatures. Of note, the 19F signal can be easily quantified and a merging of the 19F datasets with the anatomical 1H MRI images enables precise anatomical localization. In this review, we briefly summarize the background of 19F MRI for inflammation imaging, active targeting approaches to visualize thrombi and specific immune cells, introduce studies about multispectral 19F MRI, and summarize one study that imaged thromboinflammation by multispectral 19F MRI.