In Vivo and Post-Mortem Detection of Amyloid Plaques with a Non-Specific Gadolinium Contrast Agent

Alexandra Emmanuelle Petiet^1,2, Anne Bertrand², Christopher J. Wiggins², Diane Houitte³, Thomas Debeir¹, Thomas Rooney¹, Marc Dhenain^2,3

The potential for magnetic resonance microscopy to detect amyloid plaque deposits, one of the lesions of Alzheimer's disease, has previously been demonstrated. One of the challenges in imaging plaques is to achieve high-enough resolution and contrast to resolve 50-micron large lesions. This study showed that the use of a contrast agent allowed individual plaque detection at very high resolution (23 x 23 x 90 microns) on T2-weighted scans of fixed transgenic mouse brains. The method was extended to live mice using intracerebroventricular injections and showed that plaques can be resolved at 50 x 50 x 200 microns.