Comparison of Brain Viscoelasticity and Brain Volumetry in Healthy Volunteers

Ingolf Sack¹, Kaspar Streitberger¹, Uwe Hamhaber², Dieter Klatt¹, Sebastian Papazoglou¹, Dagmar Krefting², Jrgen Braun²

Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) has shown to be the only suitable noninvasive method for determining viscoelastic properties of the living human brain. Brain stiffness and internal friction can change significantly due to neurodegenerative diseases. To assess the potential of MRE for an accurate differentiation and staging of such diseases, the influence of varying brain volumes on the quantification of viscoelastic properties was investigated. Preliminary results show, that no correlation exists between viscoelastic modules determined by MRE and normalized brain volumes. This indicates that MRE reveals independent and new information that is not influenced by brain atrophy.