Abstract #1064

MRI and MRSI Characterization of the Quinolinic Acid Lesion Model of Huntington's Disease Over 49 Days: Persistence of Low Apparent Diffusion Coefficients and Spontaneous Recovery of N-Acetyl Aspartate Levels

Noam Shemesh¹, Ofer Sadan², Eldad Melamed³, Daniel Offen³, Yoram Cohen¹

¹School of Chemistry, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; ²Laboratory of Neurosciences, FMRC, Rabin Medical Center, Sackler School of Medicine , Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; ³Laboratory of Neurosciences, FMRC, Rabin Medical Center, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

We characterized the spatial and temporal evolution of the Quinolinc acid (QA) lesion using T2 and diffusion weighted images (WI), and MRSI performed on days 1, 8, 25 and 49 post-QA injection. On day 1, a marked affected area was viewed as hyperintensity by the T2WI. On day 49, the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps from the striatum revealed areas characterized by both high and low ADCs, which correlated to necrotic regions and dense macrophage regions respectively. Normalized N-Acetyl-Aspartate levels revealed a statistically significant spontaneous recovery from 0.670.15 of the contralateral value on day 1 to 0.900.12 on day 49.