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Mapping myelin content in ex-vivo MS brain tissue using short-T2 MRI of the lipid-protein bilayer
Emily Louise Baadsvik1, Markus Weiger1, Romain Froidevaux1, Wolfgang Faigle2, Benjamin Victor Ineichen2, and Klaas Paul Pruessmann1
1ETH Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 2University Hospital Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
D2O-exchanged multiple sclerosis brain tissue was imaged with short-T2 MRI techniques, yielding contrast that is closely correlated with corresponding myelin-stained cryosections for white matter, grey matter and multiple sclerosis lesions.

Figure 3: Image series showing the correlation between MRI results, photographs and histology for all samples. a-d) High-resolution HYFI images, e-h) amplitude maps of the uT2-S fit component, i-l) sample photographs, m-p) corresponding 10 µm cryosections with myelin staining using immunohistochemistry for MOG (brown) and haematoxylin counterstaining (purple). Note that sample 2 contains two tissue pieces (originally connected), but histology was only performed on the larger one.

Figure 1: Time evolution of signal intensity in SPI images of human MS brain tissue after D2O exchange. Six of the fourteen images acquired for the SPI series of sample 1 are shown. The signal intensity drops as TE increases, and has all but vanished after 413 μs – a clear indication that the captured signal stems from tissues with T2 times of around a hundred microseconds at most.