A new study published in JACC: Basic to Translational Science, one of the journals of the American College of Cardiology, marks an important step for our portfolio company Nano4Imaging and for the wider field of radiation-free interventions.
The paper reports the first successful demonstration, in a preclinical animal model, of using MRI to guide the placement of stents in the branch pulmonary arteries, the vessels that carry blood from the heart to the lungs, performed entirely without X-rays. The work was carried out by a team at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University, together with industry partners including Nano4Imaging, Siemens Healthineers, Cook Medical and NuMED.
Why does this matter? Today stenting procedures relies on X-ray guidance, and these are among the highest-radiation cases performed in a children’s cathlab. MRI offers a way to guide the same procedure with no radiation at all. The obstacles in MRI have been visibility and heating, since standard guidewires do not show up clearly inside a scanner and heat up. This is precisely the problem Nano4Imaging’s technology solves. Using the EmeryGlide guidewire, the world’s first FDA-cleared non-metallic MRI guidewire, together with MagnaFy markers on the NuMED balloons, the team could follow the devices in real time and position the stent accurately. It succeeded in seven animals, with blood flowing normally through the stented arteries afterwards.
Another key enabler was the scanner itself, a commercially available 0.55-T Siemens Free.Max. Lower-field, wide-bore systems of this kind reduce the device-heating risk that has long held interventional MRI back, and they allow much of the existing catheterisation equipment to be used with only minor changes. This scanner is what makes MRI a genuine candidate to bring radiation-free intervention into routine practice rather than keeping it confined to a handful of specialist centres.
The study also reflects how Nano4Imaging works, alongside partners rather than alone. The collaboration with Siemens Healthineers, Cook Medical and Numed shows a shared industrial commitment to making interventional MRI a clinical reality, and this result is a concrete sign that the company’s vision is steadily being put into practice. It extends Nano4Imaging’s evidence base from diagnostic catheterisation into a genuinely therapeutic intervention, and it is exactly the kind of progress that drew us to the company.
The paper Liu Y, et al. JACC Basic Transl Sci. 2026;11(6):1-2. is open access and can be read in full here.
