Magnetic resonance as a tool for pharmaco-imaging

Imaging technologies in the nonclinical laboratory have been greatly bolstered by the ever-improving methods available with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Small animal systems have been growing in capability even while becoming more amenable to use by biologists, revolutionizing how we can study pathophysiology and follow a drug or biologic therapy. MR’s ability to characterize many anatomical and physiological processes, based on their underlying influence on tissue magnetization properties, has led, for example, to discoveries in the psychopharmacology of attention deficit and cognitive drug therapies and in recording changes of oxygenation, blood flow and vessel permeability in acute studies, or the chronic remodeling of tissue water diffusion following therapy. This is a short and clearly abbreviated discussion of the applications of MRI in the nonclinical (and clinical) drug development laboratory, and it is meant to introduce the reader to the concepts and how this specific imaging modality likely offers the most versatile of all imaging modalities as well as being one with very high resolution.