Michael
David Wong1, X Josette Chen1, R Mark Henkelman1
1Mouse Imaging Centre, Hospital for
Sick Children,
The
role of MRI in developmental biology, specifically in mouse embryo
organogenesis and phenotyping, is significantly increasing due to
technologies that allow for high image resolution and throughput. The majority of ex-vivo MRI mouse embryo
studies improve image contrast and SNR by immersing the sample into some
concentration of Gd-based contrast agent.
It is widely believed that all gadolinium-based contrast agents have
identical tissue interactions and provide similar MRI images despite the
differences in Gd-chelates. Here,
relaxivity (r1) variation amongst mouse embryo organs is observed for one
class of contrast agents, while homogeneity is seen throughout the embryo for
another.