T2-Weighted MRI Visualizes Cortical Layers in Living Mice

Susann Boretius¹, Anastasia Stoykova², Roland Tammer¹, Thomas Michaelis¹, Jens Frahm¹

The delineation of cortical layers in living animals is of major interest for a variety of questions ranging from developmental biology to studies of genetic alterations. Here, high-resolution T2-weighted MRI at 9.4 T is demonstrated to detect layer-like structures in mouse brain in vivo, which at least in part correspond to the histologically defined 6-layer structure of mammalian cortex. For the first time age-related cortical differences in healthy mice and severe alterations in layer architecture in cortex-specific Pax6 conditional knockout mice are visualized by in vivo MRI.