ex-vivo MRI Detects T2 Alterations Associated with Alzheimers Disease, Comorbid Neuropathology, and Antemortem Cognition

Robert Dawe¹, David A. Bennett¹, Julie Schneider¹, Sue Leurgans¹, Konstantinos Arfanakis, ¹²

The transverse relaxation time constant T2 carries potentially valuable information regarding the condition of brain tissue. Postmortem T2 maps from 211 elderly human brain hemispheres were spatially normalized and voxelwise analysis of covariance (VANCOVA) was carried out, with histopathologic observations serving as explanatory variables. This analysis revealed significant associations between regionally prolonged T2 values and histopathologically confirmed Alzheimers disease, as well as gross infarcts. An additional VANCOVA showed that T2 in white matter of the frontal lobe can account for approximately 10% of the cross-sectional variance in semantic and working memory.