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A stent is a device that is implanted to hold open an artery that has become too narrow due to atherosclerosis.
Stent keeps blood vessel open
When imaged under MRI, a stent acts as a Faraday cage (it shields radio-frequency signals) and creates a large image artifact. This image shows a standard vascular stent imaged under MRI.
MRI Image of stent is obscured because of interference generated by the Faraday cage effect
The image artifact (the large dark area) prevents the physician from seeing the critical area in and around the stent. This is caused by the fact that a metallic stent behaves as a Faraday Cage due to its geometry and material, and the stent additionally creates a magnetic susceptibility artifact due to the material of manufacture of the stent. Biophan has developed a solution to this problem.
To overcome this limitation, Biophan has developed a patented resonator technology, which uses tuned circuits to increase the radio frequency (RF) signal, making it possible to image within and around a stent. This is an MRI image of a stent using the technology:
Biophan's resonator technology allows for accurate visualization inside a stent
Biophan’s technology allows accurate imaging of the blood clot within the stent. This technology could also be used to check for restenosis (re-narrowing of a coronary artery) within the stent. Currently, measuring restenosis within a stent requires either an angiography or an intravenous ultrasound; both of which require a complex, costly, and invasive catheterization procedure and have a higher chance of complications to the patient than does a simple, non-invasive MRI scan.
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