Abstract #1078

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

Nicoleta 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.