Relaxation parameters of water molecules coordinated with Gd(III) complexes and hybrid materials based on δ-FeOOH (100) nanoparticles: a theoretical study of hyperfine inter-actions for CAs in MRI

Abstract

Cancer is a serious disease that afflicts and worries much of the population, which significantly affects all ages and socio-economic groups and one reason is the great difficulty of the initial diagnostic phase. Thus, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an effective technique for detecting cancer (especially breast cancer), however, for a better visualization of the tissues it is necessary to use the Contrast Agents (CAs), which are paramagnetic compounds capable of increasing the longitudinal and transverse relaxation times (T1 and T2) of water molecules. The CAs are important to increase the rate of relaxation of water protons, the most commonly used CAs are Gd3+ complexes. Thus, in this work we propose two new hybridizing contrast agent, d-FeOOH(100).[Gd(DTPA)(H2O)]2- and δ-FeOOH (100).[Gd(DTPA-BMA)(H2O)], both compounds are capable of increasing both relaxation times T1 and T2. Theoretical results show that the hybrid compound considerably increases the hyperfine coupling constants 1H and 17O of water molecules. In this way, our results show that both hybrid compounds can be used as new contrast agents, thus replacing Gd3+ complexes.