John Frederic Schenck1, Jeff H. Duyn2, Peter van Gelderen2, Hellmut Merkle2, Arnulf E. Koeppen3, Jiang Qian, Earl A. Zimmerman3, John Cowan3, David L. Henderson
1MRI Laboratory, General Electric Global Research, Schenectady, NY, USA; 2NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA; 3Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, USA
The rare genetic disorder aceruloplasminemia (aCp) is characterized by brain iron deposition 4-5 times that in normal brain and thereby permits a more detailed evaluation of brain iron distribution than can be performed in normal brains. We report the first high field (3T and 7T), high resolution MRI postmortem studies of an aCp brain. In addition to the usual pattern of brain iron deposition in the basal ganglia and related deep brain nuclei, this brain shows striking evidence for iron deposition in white matter and cortex and other regions not normally considered to contain iron. This suggests the possibility of increasing the brain regions where iron-dependent contrast can be used to study neurodegenerative diseases.