Investigations of the horse conceptus via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nitroxide spin labels as contrast agents.

Results are presented which illustrate the usefulness of Magnetic Resonance Imaging as applied to the study of living embryos. Nitroxide spin labels were employed as contrast agents to study the structure and properties of the embryos. These spin labels offer the additional advantage that they may potentially be bound to biologically important molecules thereby imparting the ability to produce contrast in the MR images to these new molecules. The horse conceptus was chosen over other embryos due to its large size. Whereas the embryos of cattle and swine are sub-millimetre in size, the horse conceptus is on the order of 10 millimetres in diameter. The availability of microscopic imaging gradient coils will allow the techniques developed in this study to be applied to the smaller embryos of other species.