Automatic Detection of Amyloid Plaques on Ex Vivo APP/PS1 Mouse Brain Using a Zoom T2-Weighted Spin Echo Sequence

Benjamin Marty¹, Cline Giraudeau¹, Julien Flament¹, Sidi Mohamed Ahmed Ghaly¹, Franck Lethimonnier¹, Fawzi Boumezbeur¹, Julien Valette¹, Sbastien Mriaux¹

Amyloid plaques are a marker of Alzheimer's disease which are traditionally detected as hypointense signals on T2*-weighted images due to the presence of iron. This study proposes a comparison between the images of an ex vivo APP/PS1 mouse brain obtained using a conventional T2* gradient echo sequence and a zoom adiabatic T2 spin echo sequence. This comparison, based on the ability of both sequences to allow successful plaques detection using an automatic home-made procedure, reveals that T2 contrast allows resolving amyloid plaques with a better specificity than T2* contrast, which is disturbed by the hypointense signals coming from blood vessels.