Three‐dimensional inversion recovery manganese‐enhanced MRI of mouse brain using super‐resolution reconstruction to visualize nuclei involved in higher brain function |
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Authors: | Dana S Poole Esben Plenge Dirk H J Poot Egbert A J F Lakke Wiro J Niessen Erik Meijering Louise van der Weerd |
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Institution: | 1. C. J. Gorter Center for High Field MRI, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, , Leiden, the Netherlands;2. Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam (BIGR), Departments of Medical Informatics and Radiology, Erasmus MC ‐ University Medical Center Rotterdam, , Rotterdam, the Netherlands;3. Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Leiden University Medical Center, , Leiden, the Netherlands;4. Quantitative Imaging Group, Department of Imaging Science and Technology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, , Delft, the Netherlands;5. Department of Human Genetics, Leiden University Medical Center, , Leiden, the Netherlands |
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Abstract: | The visualization of activity in mouse brain using inversion recovery spin echo (IR‐SE) manganese‐enhanced MRI (MEMRI) provides unique contrast, but suffers from poor resolution in the slice‐encoding direction. Super‐resolution reconstruction (SRR) is a resolution‐enhancing post‐processing technique in which multiple low‐resolution slice stacks are combined into a single volume of high isotropic resolution using computational methods. In this study, we investigated, first, whether SRR can improve the three‐dimensional resolution of IR‐SE MEMRI in the slice selection direction, whilst maintaining or improving the contrast‐to‐noise ratio of the two‐dimensional slice stacks. Second, the contrast‐to‐noise ratio of SRR IR‐SE MEMRI was compared with a conventional three‐dimensional gradient echo (GE) acquisition. Quantitative experiments were performed on a phantom containing compartments of various manganese concentrations. The results showed that, with comparable scan times, the signal‐to‐noise ratio of three‐dimensional GE acquisition is higher than that of SRR IR‐SE MEMRI. However, the contrast‐to‐noise ratio between different compartments can be superior with SRR IR‐SE MEMRI, depending on the chosen inversion time. In vivo experiments were performed in mice receiving manganese using an implanted osmotic pump. The results showed that SRR works well as a resolution‐enhancing technique in IR‐SE MEMRI experiments. In addition, the SRR image also shows a number of brain structures that are more clearly discernible from the surrounding tissues than in three‐dimensional GE acquisition, including a number of nuclei with specific higher brain functions, such as memory, stress, anxiety and reward behavior. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
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Keywords: | manganese‐enhanced MRI mouse brain super‐resolution reconstruction brain nuclei activation three‐dimensional inversion recovery |
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