6. Conclusion

The future of MRI, as we can imagine it today, lies in increasing the intensity of the static magnetic fields used: for horizontal magnets, the current limits are around 17.6 teslas (small animals), 11.7 teslas (humans). This development offers the prospect of greater sensitivity and resolution, the objective being single-cell detection in an organism in its entirety. However, this trend comes up against limitations due to the effect of the magnetic field on the environment and on the organisms studied. The evolution of the MRI field of action, combined with the use of contrast agents, now seems to offer many new possibilities.

In addition to commercial contrast agents, which have already demonstrated their usefulness and efficacy, the emergence of molecular imaging is opening up new prospects for the use of lanthanide complexes in the biomedical field. The work...