Lindsey A. Leigland1,
Marcus Cappiello2, Christopher D. Kroenke1, 3
1Advanced
Imaging Research Center and Department of Behavioral Neuroscience, Oregon
Health & Science University, Portland, OR, United States; 2Department
of Physics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States; 3Division
of Neuroscience, Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health &
Science University, Beaverton, OR, United States
The goal of this research was to improve understanding of the determinants of physical properties (spin relaxation, diffusion, etc.) in postmortem tissue, as well as further characterize the dependence of these molecular properties on common laboratory tissue processing procedures. Here we show that exposure of tissue to alkaline conditions can induce dramatic (>2-fold) and irreversible changes in the water apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) without affecting the water 1H transverse relaxation, an effect that is potentially realized through modifications to biological membranes. This research provides an avenue toward developing further insight into the determinants of physical parameters observable by MRI.
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