Jian Yang1,2, Jianxin Liu3, Gang Niu1, Rong Wang1, Yong Liu4, BoLang Yu1, Ed Xuekui Wu2
1Medical Imaging Center of The First Hospital, The School of Medicine,Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China; 2Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; 3Institute of neurobiology, The School of Medicine, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China; 4Institute of neurobiology, The School of Medicine, Xi'an Jiaotong University,, Xi'an, China
In this study, micron-sized iron oxide particles (MPIOs) were injected into the left anterior lateral ventricle of 10-day-old normal rats. T2- and T2*-weighted images were acquired using a 7T scanner at day 1, 3, 7 and 14 after the MPIO injection. Histological analyses were then performed to identify MPIOs in different migrating cells, namely, neural progenitor and astrocytes-like progenitor cells. The migrating pathways of the MPIO-labeled endogenous progenitors exhibited a predominantly bidirectional, rostrocaudal pattern in tangential orientation. Such in situ MPIO labeling approach opens the possibility of using MRI to study the mechanism of cell migration in developing brain.