Abstract #4319

Detecting Multiple Sclerosis Cortical Lesions Post-Mortem Using 7 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Bing Yao¹, Simon Hametner², Peter van Gelderen¹, Hellmut Merkle¹, Fredric Cantor³, Henry McFarland³, Hans Lassmann², Jeff H. Duyn¹, Francesca Bagnato³

¹AMRI, NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States; ²Centre for Brain Research, Medical University, Vienna, Austria; ³NIB, NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States

Focal cortical grey matter lesions (CLs) are an important component of multiple sclerosis (MS) pathology. However, detecting cortical lesions in MS using MRI poses challenges. MRI at ultra-high field strengths such as 7 Tesla has the potential to superbly enhance MS-induced CLs visibility. In this study, we applied ultra-high resolution R2* maps to detect and evaluate cortical lesions and their subtypes and the MRI results were compared with the pathology analysis.