A Novel Technique for Correlating Between in vivo and Ex Vivo Whole Body Mammary Glands: Comparison of Apparent Coefficient Values

Xiaobing Fan¹, Kay Macleod¹, Suzanne Conzen¹, Erica Markiewicz¹, Marta Zamora¹, James Vosicky¹, Devkumar Mustafi¹, Gregory S. Karczmar¹

Correlation of in-vivo with ex-vivo whole body MRI of mouse mammary glands is reported. High resolution T2-weighted spin echo images and diffusion weighted images of the polyoma middle T oncoprotein mouse model were acquired in-vivo and ex-vivo at 9.4T. Fiducial markers were used to correlate features on in-vivo and ex-vivo images. The results demonstrate parallels between in-vivo and ex-vivo ADCs; this suggests that ex-vivo images can serve as a guide to improve diffusion weighted imaging. In addition, the registration method shown here will ultimately be used to co-register in-vivo images with histology, using ex-vivo images as a bridge.