Development of device for quantifying magnetic nanoparticle tracers accumulating in sentinel lymph nodes

The developed device with electromagnetic coils and small permanent magnets quantifies the iron contents of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles for sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy. To remove diamagnetic and paramagnetic components and detect only superparamagnetic components, a 2nd harmonics signal is detected by a gradiometer under a moderate AC magnetic field (1–2 mT) with the fundamental frequency (2.944 kHz) of the coils and DC magnetic field (1–2 mT) of the magnets. The detection limit with a signal-to-noise ratio of 5 is approximately 0.28 μg of iron, and the device has a wide dynamic range of 104, 0.28 μg–2.8 mg. Additional coils and permanent magnets play an important role producing the optimum distribution of AC/DC magnetic fields for an iron distribution-independent and SLN size-independent quantification. We demonstrated the quantification of the iron in phantoms, which have a size of 3–20 mm with varied iron distributions and contain magnetic nanoparticles numerically. These results indicate that the developed device is useful for quantifying the magnetic nanoparticles accumulating in SLNs.