Liver cell labelling with MRI contrast agents.

Cell transplantation is a promising approach to improve the life of patients with liver disease. At present, however, techniques to track and visualise transplanted cells in patients are fairly limited and further development of non-invasive imaging technology is needed to advance the monitoring of liver cell grafts. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive imaging technology that already allows the visualisation of particular cell fractions in the liver by using MR contrast agents. The use of contrast agents to pre-label liver cells prior to transplantation will potentially provide a method to identify, track and study the integration of engrafted cells non-invasively by MRI. Before this technique can find its clinical application, in vitro and pre-clinical in vivo studies need to be conducted to determine the safety and specificity of this approach.