Parastou
Foroutan1,2, Susanne L. T. Cappendijk3, Samuel C. Grant1,2
1Chemical & Biomedical Engineering,
The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States; 2CIMAR,
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee, FL, United States; 3Biomedical
Sciences, College of Medicine, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL,
United States
Temperature
is evaluated as an easy method of increasing contrast in preserved tissue. In
this study, excised, fixed brains from the adult male zebra finch were scanned
at multiple temperatures between 5-25 Celsius. Relaxation (T1, T2 and T2*),
signal-to-noise, relative contrast and contrast-to-noise were measured at
each temperature. In addition, high-resolution 3D gradient recalled echo
scans were acquired at 40-micron isotropic resolution at each temperature.
Although all relaxation mechanisms displayed decreases with temperature, only
T2* contrast displayed structural enhancement. The ramifications of these
findings are discussed with respect to microimaging studies of preserved
tissue samples.