Dartmouth Events

Abstract: Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have had an increasingly important role in many research fields. Specially, the capability of remote sensing using magnetic nanoparticles has exciting implications. By using them as remote biomedical sensors in place of methods that would usually required invasive procedures or harmful radiation, these particles could influence the next generation of cancer detection and therapy. The general direction of our group's efforts over the past few years has been to develop viable in vivo technique capable of measuring the concentration of molecular biomarkers using magnetic spectroscopyof Brownian rotation (MSB) technology. One of the biggest challenges for this problem has been that multiple effects, such as change in temperature, viscosity and number of particles, can all contribute to the change in the magnetic moment of hte magnetic nanoparticles. Therefore, it is important to isolate the different effects that influence the spectroscopy of magnetic nanoparticles, so in vivo measurements can be made of specific phenomenon rather than combinations of effects. In this thesis, I have used dimensional analysis to formalize scaling arguments to find the change in many properties without making approximations about the form of the signal. Based on this and through computational simulation and experiment, I have presented and validated a method improving the sensitivity of magnetic nanoparticle (NP) measurements. I have developed scale corrections in two dimensions to estimate the temperature and relaxation effects simultaneously. I have also estimated the effect of number of NPs in the pickup coil volume by correcting the raw MSB signal for temperature and relaxation. The results of these projects will help provide important in vivo functional capabilities for future applications utilizing the spectroscopy of magnetic nanoparticles.