Abstract #3670

Quantitative water content mapping in situ by in situ MRI: a promising forensic tool for post-mortem edema characterization

Ana-Maria Oros-Peusquens¹, Melanie Bauer^2,3, Claudia Lenz^2,4, Eva Scheurer^2,3, and N. Jon Shah^1,5,6,7

¹INM-4, Research Centre Juelich, Juelich, Germany, ²Institute of Forensic Medicine, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland, ³Institute of Forensic Medicine, Health Department Basel-Stadt, Basel, Switzerland, ⁴Institute of Forensic Medicine, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Health Department Basel-Stadt, Basel, Switzerland, ⁵RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, ⁶INM-11, JARA, Research Centre Juelich, Juelich, Germany, ⁷JARA - BRAIN - Translational Medicine, Aachen, Germany

Synopsis

Keywords: Multi-Contrast, Ex-Vivo Applications, Ischemia, Microstructure, Relaxometry, Screening, Tissue Characterisation, Traumatic Brain Injury

Motivation: Detection of brain edema at forensic examination remains subjective and observer dependent, but more objective criteria perform poorly. A notable exception is the normalized brain weight.

Goal(s): Investigate MRI measures of death-associated edema.

Approach: We establish in situ water content mapping and T2* relaxometry in a pilot study, adapting a fast quantitative protocol (~6min) using a standard mGRE sequence.

Results: Using the derived quantitative maps, we find correlations between water content and T2* in WM, between tissue water weight and brain weight, and macromolecular density vs normalized brain weight. Microstructural characterization of brain oedema with qMRI seems feasible.

Impact: Assessing the presence of edema as indicative of the cause of death is important for forensic examinations but is currently observer dependent. We seek to establish objective qMRI-based diagnostic measures and propose microstructural markers such as the macromolecular density.

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