Use of Manganese Supplement as an Alternative to Oral Contrast Agents for Gastrointestinal Tract Magnetic Resonance Imaging

This research aims to find an alternative oral contrast agents that can be used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, this contrast agent must be with no or minimum side effects and gives a best imaging quality.
We have used manganese supplement (intake daily dose) after dissolving in different amounts of distilled water to obtain samples (the concentrations of the manganese solution) as oral contrast agents. The samples have been placed in tubes and imaged by MRI for finding the sample that has lowest concentration with best imaging sequences and contrast of the images. After that, this sample was tested by healthy volunteers. The subjects of the investigation were ten healthy volunteers who were scanned pre-contrast and post-contrast. The image result is measured by the signal value to calculate the SNR, contrast and then a different test is performed. There were significant variations in stomach SNR values between pre and post contrast (p-value ).
The results show that the manganese supplement gives a good imaging sequences and contrast of the images. The contrast of manganese solution is positive on T1-weighted and negative on T2-weighted.This manganese supplement behavior is similar to the complex chemical manganese compounds studied in other investigations.
The manganese supplement can be considered as a positive contrast agent on T1-weighted and negative contrast agent on T2-weighted.