Abstract #2104

Brown M, Du Y, Chu R, Kleinschmidt-DeMasters B, Simon J

Demyelination of white matter in the central nervous system is considered the primary pathology of multiple sclerosis (MS). We present the preliminary results of mapping the myelin water fraction (MWF) using a fast multi-slice imaging technique. A multi-slice echo-planar spectroscopy imaging sequence was used to record the T2* relaxation in each voxel with a scan time less than 10 minutes. Multi-exponential analysis using a 3-pool model was used for quantitative mapping of MWF. The MWF maps, with a matrix size of 256x256, clearly depict the MS lesions in post mortem human brains.