In-Vivo Rat Brain Tissue Characterization by Susceptibility Weighted Imaging at 9.4 T

Nicoleta Baxan¹, Iulius Dragonu¹, Laura-Adela Harsan¹, Maxim Zaitsev¹, Jrgen Hennig¹, Dominik von Elverfeldt¹

Magnetic heterogeneity of brain tissue is caused by the venous vascular system (paramagnetic blood deoxyhemoglobin), by different tissue iron concentrations and tissue myelin content. These heterogeneities are the origin of contrast in susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) since they induce an offset in the resonance frequency that can be detected in the signal phase. In this study SWI was used to improve contrast in rat brain regions of different magnetic susceptibilities by combining magnitude and phase information and to estimate, for the first time on animal models, frequency shifts occurred within and between white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM).