Sanjay K. Verma1,
Sankar Seramani1, Bhanu Prakash KN1, Enci Mary Kan2,
Kian Chye Ng2, Mui Hong Tan2, Jia Lu2,
Sendhil S. Velan1, 3
1Laboratory
of Molecular Imaging, Singapore Bioimaging Consortium, Singapore, Singapore; 2Defence
Medical and Environmental Research Institute, DSO National Laboratories,
Singapore, Singapore; 3Clinical Imaging Research Centre, Agency
for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, Singapore
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to blasts by improvised explosive devices is increasing, creating various neuropsychological dysfunctions in both animals and humans. We investigated the effect of open field blast injuries on rat brain using multi-echo susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI). Multi-echo SWI provided phase and R2* with better SNR and CNR, making it a sensitive technique to image blast induced TBI. In addition, the visibility of veins was enhanced with multi-echo SWI. In our study, the decrease in signal from veins after blast due to increase in deoxyhomoglobin was observed in acute injury phase, which subsided in the recovery phase. Multi-echo SWI helps to detect and classify the types and patterns of blast induced TBI.
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