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Abstract #1078

Phase Contrast MR Microscopy of Neuronal Architecture of the Living Rat and Mouse Brain at 7T and 9.4T

MAGNA25Nicoleta Baxan1, Iulius Dragonu1, Laura-Adela Harsan1, Juergen Hennig2, Dominik von Elverfeldt3

1Department of Radiology, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, BW, Germany; 2Department of radiology, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, BW, Germany; 3Department of Radiology, University Medical center Freiburg, Freiburg, BW, Germany


The signal phase information brought significant advantages in revealing anatomical details of the human brain yielding excellent depiction of cortical morphology and substructure. While cortical cytoarchitecture was extensively studied via histology, ex-vivo MRI or MEMRI, the detection of cytoarchitectural boundaries non-invasively was demonstrated in this study by exploiting the MR signal phase. We demonstrate for the first time the potential of phase images to solve the challenge of visualizing the cortical lamination of the living rat isocortex and mouse cerebellum. Frequency shifts occurring within and between WM/GM and cerebellar cortex were quantitatively analyzed at two field strengths, 7T and 9.4T.