A simulation study for an open-sided hybrid MPI-MRI scanner

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) provides images of magnetic nanoparticle distribution without any signal from the surrounding tissue. MPI would benefit from an additional imaging technique that reveals the anatomical background information, required in many applications. Here, we present a simulation study based on our in-house open-sided prototype MPI system, in which the coils can be utilized interchangeably for MPI and MRI data acquisitions. The system can provide a selection field gradient of 0.5 T m−1 for MPI in field free line topology, and a B0 field of up to 50 mT for MRI. We analyze the system-induced deviations on MRI images for different B0 valuesand pulse sequence parameters.