Analysis of magnetic nanoparticles using second harmonic responses

Abstract Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a new medical imaging technology with a number of potential applications. It is based on utilizing the non-linear magnetization response for magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs). We have proposed a method to improve the detection sensitivity for the magnetization of MNPs, and their imaging technique, based on the detection of a second harmonic of the response using a high Tc SQUID. The advantage of using the second harmonic is that the response can be measured even with small amplitudes. In this paper, superparamagnetic MNPs with different diameters and different compositions of materials were analyzed by this method. In the MNPs, Resovist was found to be almost one order of magnitude larger than that of the other MNPs tested. The magnetic moments of the MNPs were estimated by fitting with the Langevin function to obtain the magnetic moments m of Resovist of 3.62×10−18 [J/T]. The magnetic moment m of Resovist was 7.4 times larger than the other MNPs.