Gruschke et al: New LabChip article

Lab on a chip phased-array MR multi-platform analysis system

Oliver G. Gruschke, Nicoleta Baxan, Lars Clad, Kai Kratt, Dominik von Elverfeldt, Andreas Peter, Jürgen Hennig, Vlad Badilita, Ulrike Wallrabe and Jan G. Korvink 

Lab Chip, 2012, Advance Article 

DOI: 10.1039/C2LC20585H, Paper 

Abstract: We present a lab on a chip (LOC) compatible modular platform for magnetic resonance (MR)-based investigation of sub-millimetre samples. The platform combines the advantages offered respectively by microcoils (high resolution at the microscale) and macroscopic surface coils (large field of view) as MR-detectors and consists of a phased array of microcoils (PAMs) providing a flat MR-sensitive area of 18.3 mm2 with a B 0-field uniformity better than 0.25 ppm in the sensor centre area. We demonstrate both high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and NMR spectroscopy using this platform. To demonstrate the application for biological samples, we report MR imaging of fish oocytes with an in-plane resolution of 30 × 30 μm2 and a contrast to noise ratio of 10 for a scan time of only 13 min 39 s. We have also demonstrated high-resolution spectroscopy of a water phantom achieving 11 ppb (4.5 Hz at 400 MHz) linewidth and an SNR of 28 for only 12 s scan time. State of the art automatic wire bonding technology in conjunction with MEMS techniques has been employed to manufacture the platform with potential applications in MR-investigation of planar samples.