Optimising magnetic sentinel lymph node biopsy in an in vivo porcine model

Variable volumes and concentrations of a magnetic tracer were injected into the third inguinal mammary gland bilaterally in an in vivo porcine model (1) allowing the performance of magnetic sentinel lymph node biopsy of draining inguinal nodes (2). The harvested nodes were 'darkly stained' for iron uptake and 'hot' for magnetometer counts (3). The iron was deposited within the cortex and subcapsular space - visible as blue using PERL's staining - on histopathology (4) and was quantified using quantitative magnetometry and a validated iron-grading scale.236