Jun-Cheng
Weng1,2, Sheng-Kai Wu3, Win-Li Lin3,4,
Wen-Yih Iascc Tseng1,5
1Center for Optoelectronic Biomedicine,
National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Department
of Medical Imaging and Radiological Sciences, Chung Shan Medical University,
Taichung, Taiwan; 3Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National
Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Medical Engineering Research
Division, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan; 5Department
of Medical Imaging, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
Focused
ultrasound (FUS) along with an ultrasound contrast agent (UCA) can induce
transient and local increase in the permeability of blood vessel wall or cell
membrane, and the change in blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability can be
appropriately indicated by contrast-enhanced MRI. Recently, most studies have
used optimum FUS parameters with intravascular injection of pre-formed
micro-bubbles to produce BBB disruption with minimum damage to the neurons.
However, there are no studies reporting that under biosafety regime BBB
disruption could still be predicted by MR contrast enhancement. The purpose
of this study was to see if the traditional T1-weighted (T1W) imaging
sequences, spin echo (SE) and gradient echo (GE), can discern the difference
in the BBB disruption in lower dose regime or not. A high sensitivity R1
mapping was used as a gold standard and absolutely quantification. The
quantitative analysis indexing the degree of BBB disruption and the
correlation against Evans blue (EB) staining were also demonstrated. Our
results suggest that, in the absence of hemorrhage, contrast-enhanced T1W
gradient echo and spin echo sequence were equally reliable in quantifying the
BBB disruption.