Abstract #3309

A DOUBLE ACQUISITION FOUR-CONTRAST IMAGING APPROACH TO DELINEATE HUMAN BRAINSTEM ANATOMY IN-VIVO AT 7 TESLA

Michael Wyss¹, Laetitia Vionnet¹, Mike Bruegger^1,2, Bernd Daeubler³, Lars Kasper^1,4, Daniel Nanz⁵, Marco Piccirelli³, David O. Brunner¹, and Klaas P. Pruessmann¹

¹Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, ²Center of Dental Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, ³Department of Neuroradiology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, ⁴Translational Neuromodeling Unit, Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, ⁵Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

The human brainstem anatomy is challenging to image in vivo on a single subject basis. The densely-packed interspersion of nuclei and white matter tracts cannot typically be imaged with an image contrast strong enough for differentiation of relevant substructures. We present an MR imaging approach at 7 Tesla that requires two high resolution MR acquisitions. From the two data sets, four image series with varying contrast weightings can be derived and used to delineate brainstem anatomy. The proposed strategy resulted in exceptionally high image quality enabling differentiation of several brainstem substructures that are hardly discernible in commonly acquired MR images.

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